The Girl with the Double D's

Content warning: The story contains graphic violence, themes of manipulation, disturbing content related to torture and death, and sexually suggestive content.

“Because when I drown in a pool of my own blood, society determines if I am reborn pure or repulsive.”

Thirty wide eyes and fourteen reproving students inspect her in a way that tells her: in this classroom, the words “unlimited creative freedom” involve both limits and constraints.

The fifteenth set of eyes, a tall teacher, quite literally removes her hands from the barricade they create over her face.

“Take your seat, Seraphina.”

She sits with a familiar compassion for sociopaths and psych patients, individuals excommunicated for something as unpreventable as their own thoughts.

The students gawk at her as though she is an exhibit. One of insanity and imbalance.

Teacher has her stay after class and firmly explains that she may not be—no—is not a fit for this very selective curriculum. A more suitable name off the waiting list will take her place.

It would be a lie to say that she does not understand the problem because she has come to understand it quite well since indulging her creative side. What she does not understand, however, is the hypocrisy of the situation.

“The quality of my writing got me into this class. Why is it also my writing getting me kicked out?”

Teacher scoffs. “I think you know that the issue is with the content.”

She tilts her head to quickly review the laminated paper attached to the wall with a lopsided heart sticker.

CREATIVE WRITING— No discrimination, no sexism, no racism, no homophobia, and no rules!

“The content of my writing did not break any of your rules.”

“The content of your writing,” Teacher repeats, the volume of her voice increasing, “is deeply disturbing and graphic. Some professors condone it but I do not. Consider replacing this class with a creative writing club or seeing the school therapist.”

She does not go to see the school therapist.

She does inquire about alternative creative writing classes.

A student with an old bridge piercing adorned with scar tissue but a strikingly attractive face smiles at her sympathetically.

“Oh my God, isn’t it humiliating? She has done that to like so many of us.” Her dark eyes crinkle and her voice lowers. “Don’t worry girl, I got you.”

She takes her hand without asking for permission.

Walking down an obscure hallway.

“I’m telling you,” she continues. “We are the real victims here. This institution is supposed to encourage every kind of subject with hands on opportunities, but the second I put my hands on a keyboard I’m the ‘bad guy.’” Air quotations and slinging her back pack off of her left shoulder.

She tosses it against the wall and somehow transforms the hand holding into hand shake.

“I’m Austin, by the way.”

“Seraphina.”

“Oh my God. That’s beautiful.” She says it like it’s common sense.

Seraphina shrugs.

“So this” —Austin uses the back of her knuckles to rap on a plain door— “is where we meet. It’s kind of like a secret group.” Her phone out of her back pocket. “Starts in twenty minutes. He’ll unlock it in five.”

“He’s in there already?”

She huffs and taps on her screen, like her new friend has already become an inconvenience.

In response, Seraphina purses her lips and whispers “ooookay” under her breath.

Inside of the door is a classroom. Austin drags her backpack across the floor by a single strap like it is a child’s corpse.

On the whiteboard, behind an impressively regal looking desk that immediately reminds her of a throne, a black inscription swoops across its length.

“That which procceeds out of the man, that defileth the man. Mark 7:20”

“You,” the individual at the desk calls.

Seraphina responds to his beckoning and stands before his throne.

“You’re Seraphina?” he asks omnisciently.

His voice has the capacity to put her on her knees.

“I am.”

His eyes do not have color, his hair is also black and his beard is short. He is beautiful in an impossible and disarming way.

She wonders, in a moment of girlish infatuation, if he could be the most beautiful angel of them all, the one cast down.

He studies her with a look so intense it borders on intimacy.

Veined hands stretch across his throne in a manner that seems to ask, “Do you want me?”

He rolls his tongue across his bottom lip. “Do you want me to help you?”

She holds his gaze, perplexed but silent.

“I can make you a better writer, Sera.”

She nods and sticks out her hand to him.

He waves it away and turns his back to her, motioning to the board.

“Read this.”

“I did.”

“Do you understand it?”

“Sure.”

He grins, and it makes him look young. “Do you understand it in the context of your recent experience?”

“I didn’t think of applying it that way.”

“That’s okay,” and his sensitivity inspires the butterflies in her stomach to rearrange themselves.

“This school is famous for its interactive creative environment. The engineers provided with full access and blessing to alter or improve any system, the artists have every wall as a canvas, the architects design the next school building and the writers? What do they do, Seraphina?”

“They write.”

“They write,” he repeats with disgust. “And, well, isn’t writing enough?”

The question hangs in the air precariously.

“I used to be a teacher.” Redirecting the conversation. “But why teach when I can lead?”

This is why the desk is not a desk at all but a kingdom.

She maintains eye contact and opens her own mouth, saliva sticky and thick. “Anybody who claims to be a writer will laugh at the joke ‘I’m a writer, don’t check my search history.’ But the moment, the second I do it, I take that stereotype seriously, most people and even other writers will treat me like a Satan-worshiping disciple.”

He nods thoughtfully and she wishes she hadn’t added the simile. Her humor has been ignored.

“After you have shown your capabilities on paper, it’s only natural for them to be afraid. Tell me, what’s the most violent thing you’ve written?”

She swallows. “I guess just extensive torture and rape.”

His eyes remain unreadable. “And what’s the most vile thing you’ve ever imagined? I can guarantee you someone has already done it.”

She doesn’t reply to him, the weight of his statement settling on her comfortably.

“Let’s circle back around.” He taps on the board. “That which procceeds out of the man, that defileth the man. Poses the question,” —rubbing his finger along the shaft of a pen that seems to materialize between his fingers— “is it creativity or identity?”

“You mean what I write?”

His nose crinkles with admiration. “That’s right. You construct it in your mind and you build it with your fingers, is it not now you? You want it to be yours, you want the world to know your genius, you want to make people feel something and you want them to know it was you” —he uses his pen to suggestively poke the line between her breasts— “who gave them that.”

Her breath catches noticeably. “I do.”

“And if you’ve written it, don’t you want it? Don’t you want to experience it? To see it? To feel it? Every time you sit in front of your pages you will experience metaphysical immersion, so why do you construct these worlds if not to exist in them?”

“The world is not the actions that exist within the world.”

“Hmm,” he says. “But the fact remains: that which proceeds out of the man…”

“Are you saying that I’m guilty for my fictional crimes? I would never do those things in real life.”

“If you’ve written it, you’ve lived it. Where do you draw the line?”

She crosses her arms, pushing her chest up. “Reality and fiction.”

He ignores her movement but leans forward. “Wrong. When you became a writer, you lost the gift of simple black and white. There is no longer reality versus fiction. You swim through grey, just like you find the current state of your morals.”

She uncrosses her arms and he rewards her unmasking by examining each of her breasts individually.

Leaning forward further until his forearms are resting on his desk. If she bent over, which she considers doing, she could bury his face in them.

Her crush is complex, as most things in this world seem to be. She does not think of him asking her to dinner and then making love to her romantically, nursing her into climax and finding his own need satiated in her euphoria. Rather, she finds herself envisioning a script increasingly turbulent because once violence has become an art, the desire to be painted in it is only human.

His measured gate to seal the door, puncturing Austin’s carotid with the pen he handles, then yanking her by her hair and slamming her head down onto his desk —which has become a desk again— and taking her aggressively while she cries to the sound of a stranger gurgling their own blood.

He smiles at her wholeheartedly as if he can read her mind and is pleased with her thoughts.

“Tell me how you kill people on paper,” he instructs.

And she knows that he knows what she wants, but, because he also knows the kind of person she is, he will do nothing about it.

Murderer.

They find themselves all to be murderers. Arsonists, and thieves, and rapists, and cannibals, and authors, and isn’t writing enough? Isn’t it? Isn’t it enough to violate in fantasy? Isn’t it enough to claim the pen is a sword and it isn’t the mind that is the killer?

“It’s not. It’s never enough.”

And he says, “Please stay for today’s demonstration. I believe you’ll find it quite illuminating.”

There is a stained wooden table near the center of the room. It’s underside appears as a shelf with an arsenal of King, Lovecraft, Barker, Hendrix, and Graham Jones stacked to their limit. Its top appears as an altar, with tall candles and Damascus blades and the verse from the board burned into its surface.

“Today we are going to assist Gabriel on his novella. Gabriel?”

Gabriel is a scrawny blonde who rises from his desk and is very comfortable with those in the room.

“It’s a factual accuracy check. My main character is a 5’2 female with a more curvy figure. I need to know if she would and if so how long it would take for her to pass out if she was stabbed in the upper chest shoulder area. Right side. Her right.”

“Well,” their king says, waving from his throne, “take your pick.”

She is not confused because she is not stupid. Secrets remain secret for a reason. Still, the hairs on the back of her neck bristle when he requests the females to rise.

Only her and another girl meet the criteria, but her C cups allow her to take her seat in comparison to her competition’s DD’s.

The girl climbs onto the table hesitantly, and lets her feet hang over Misery.

The knife is haphazardly cleansed in a flame before she “loses something small for the evolution of scientific development,” or “takes one for the team,” or “participates for her participation trophy,” or, because this intrusive object buried in her soft flesh is not inbred, she makes herself the ultimate sacrifice for the sins of others, the Jesus Christ of an unnamed and undevoted club.

Is a lack of empathy a sin in itself?

Seraphina only feels thankful that it is not her shedding blood for her classmate, although, if she had been appointed, she would have accepted her destiny without protest.

The girl with the double D’s bleeds out on the table, and her classmates watch expectantly. Sera is one of them.

Her creativity has become her identity.

Gabriel takes notes via his phone, so he can stand right beside her.

“Thank you for your help!” he finally says as she collapses.

And when she awakens in a pool of her own blood, her peers will determine if she has been reborn brave or debilitated.