Grandmother's funeral

"Alright class! Today's homework is to gather things for your time capsule!"

The teacher announced as the students began to file out of the classroom.

Once every student was out of the classroom- or so she thought, she swiftly turned on her heel and began to work.

Before she could however, she spotted a child deep asleep on his desk.

It was Jerry.

The boy was a rather lonely and isolated student of hers, and his eyes always seemed to stare out into the distance, never really making eye contact.

The woman sighed, Jerry was a subject of growing concern for her, he always seemed to be sleepy, hungry, or came to school with injuries that he always passed as his own fault or as a product of foolishness.

"Jerry, it's time to go home now.."

"Huh? O-oh.. hello Ms.."

The boy stuttered as he woke up.

"Sorry for falling asleep.."

Jerry added, rubbing the back of his head in shame.

“Gather up your stuff, it’s time to go back home.”

The boy merely nodded at her and gathered his stuff.

Ms Sherly sighed once again as she ran her fingers through her curly blonde hair.  

“Perhaps, I can get the boy to open up one day..”

She said hopefully to herself.

Going back to her work, Ms Sherly wrote a note to herself

Make sure Jerry is alright

The next day came, and all the students had brought something that was important to them. They were all things that the woman had expected, footballs, dolls, books, toys, were among the most prominent items that her class had brought.

What surprised her the most however, was what Jerry had brought. 

The boy had brought a picture of his grandmother, who Ms Sherly had met once or twice. From what she knew, the woman had raised Jerry for the first few years of his life, until her health had started to deteriorate. Then Jerry was passed into the care of Gerta, a tall woman who was rather mysterious to Ms Sherly. Although her eyes couldn’t be seen due to being concealed by glasses, she always held a sense of foreboding in her gaze. The blonde wondered how the woman looked behind the glasses, the first time the teacher had met Jerry’s caretaker, she had thought that Gerta was blind, or perhaps her face was badly scarred, resulting in her concealing most of her face, which included her eyes and mouth, the latter of which was always hidden behind a scarf or high collar.

Though, Ms Shirley would have to admit that she had had a hunch that Gerta wasn’t actually caring for Jerry like she was supposed to.

Finally deciding that she had to get to the bottom of this Gerta mystery, Ms Shirley went over to the boy and asked him a simple question.

“Jerry, why is that item important to you?”

“Because Grammy cared for me.”

The boy answered plainly.

That wasn’t the answer I hoped for..

Ms Shirley thought in disappointment, and so decided to try a little harder.

“What about Gerta? Doesn’t she care for you too?”

The boy’s eyes went wide at the mention of his caretaker’s name, but said nothing for a while.

Before muttering an answer.

“Gerta is mean to me..”

His teacher sighed, she had finally gotten the answer she needed, but it was just as grim as she thought.

“Don’t worry okay? I’ll get people to help you.”

The blonde put a reassuring hand on her student’s shoulder.

“Thank you Ms Shirely..”

“Now, let's put all of our things in the time capsule shall we?”

And with that, the student and teacher walked over to join the rest of the class.

Once again, Jerry was the last one in line, and thus last to put his item in the large box the class had chosen to be their time capsule.

Loosening his grip on the item in his hands, he carefully lowered the picture of his grandmother into the box, and bid farewell to the picture.

“Bye bye, Grammy.”

A single tear ran down Jerry’s cheek.

To Jerry, this was his grandmother’s funeral.

Once the elderly woman had died, her body was reported to have been taken by another family by the time Jerry and his parents arrived. Curiously, the family that took her body was never found.

In her room, Gerta cursed something under her breath before angrily shouting into the phone.

“Then where did you put the old hag’s body then huh? I thought I told you to dissolve it in acid to get rid of the evidence!”

“Y-yes Gerta, b-but-”

“I told you to never call me by name!”

Said woman snapped, behind the scenes, she had been the nurse who had injected a fatal dose of Morphine into the elderly lady’s veins, the one who had bribed the doctors into telling Jerry’s parents that she was sick, and most obvious of all, the one who was controlling everything behind the scenes like the puppet master she was.

“Y-yes ma’am..”

“Good, now there’s a shipment of acid coming your way, don’t you dare mess up again you knucklehead.”

“HANDS UP!”

Gerta spun around, eyes wide with freight as she was caught red-handed by the police.

Years later, Jerry had successfully put Gerta in her rightful place- jail.

Once Gerta had been caught and apprehended by the police, Ms Shirley had taken it upon herself to raise the boy, since contrary to popular belief that the boy still had parents,  both of his birth parents had died due to overwork. After taking care of Gerta, it was discovered that Jerry was actually a rather academically bright boy. He loved to read, write, and most of all, he loved cookies. 

Ms Shirely had never been much of a cook, but since adopting Jerry, she had taught herself how to make decently delicious cookies, these, the boy said, reminded him of his grandmother, a lovely, caring woman who was a talented cook that had unfortunately been wrongly euthanized by her grandson’s would be caretaker.