*Mortedua sat in Algebra, staring blankly at Mr. Bossart. Though she tended to get straight A's- or B+'s- in all other classes, Algebra escaped her. On the lined paper she was drawing a number of corpses on a field during dawn, with three living figures in the foreground. As she often said, "Corpses are FUN to draw!". She began working on the armored hand twining itself around one of the living character's neck when she heard Mr. Bossart start talking loudly in that voice which meant he was being a jerk about something.
"Ms. Jameson, would you mind telling me the answer to the first question I asked this morning?"
She went back to her paper. Lydia Jameson was late again... Did Mister Bossart have to be such a berk about it, though? He was always like that. She let his booming voice wash over her, smiling vaugely. Mortedua was almost never late- she was able to squeeze between people and was quite fast. And she never used her locker. As she was thinking about this, she accidentally sketched a locker onto her paper absentmindedly. Looking down, she furiously erased it, thankful she had a good eraser. Now to get the look of.. ah, how does someone look when they're dying?, Mortedua thought, screwed up her face into a contortion of pain and desperation, and decided that would do.
Mr. Bossart had stopped speaking now, and Mortedua was grateful for the peace. She used the time between math questions to get out a white coloured pencil- the only way to shade smoothly. Mortedua should have been paying attention, though- Mr. Bossart had just asked her a question.
"Miss Bealocwealm!" he said loudly, and mispronounced it, saying Bell-ock-wellm, but his voice washed over Mortedua, who was very busy trying to draw how a dying person looks being strangled by an ancient undead man.
Mister Bossart walked up to her desk, and said, more loudly, "Miss Bealocwealm!"
Mortedua's reverie was broken, and she looked up, smiling innocently. "Yes sir?"
"I will ask you once more. 'When cutting a branch or a hedge a man applied a force of 40 pounds on the handles A and B of the shears shown on the blackboard. If AK is 24 inches and the branch is 1 1/2 inches from F, what force was exerted on the limb?'
Mortedua's mind was completely blank. She had no idea whatsoever what he meant. She decided to give whatever the last answer given in the class was- sometimes problems were like that. "Fourty-two.. pounds?" she gulped. A number of the class giggled, and Mr. Bossart wore a sneer. "Tell me, Miss Bealocwealm, what were you doing when the class went over the answer to the problem?"
Mortedua was caught up in a mischevious grin. "I was contemplating the abyss of death and how one who would earlier welcome it would appear being let in." she said. Sometimes she could not resist giving such answers. Where another teacher might send her straight to the office for such a smart-alecky answer, Mr. Bossart was like a jaguar. He enjoyed playing with his prey before moving in for the kill.
"In english, please?" he sneered, and his eyes fell upon the drawing. "Ah, but of course. Bealocwealm has to keep up with the desecration of her math notebook." Mortedua frowned. Desecration was not a good word for it. At least Murder would sound interesting and creative. He picked up the picture to show it to the class, intending to embarass Mortedua. In truth she was really quite pleased.
In the sketchy pencil drawing, bodies wearing tunics were scattered about grassy hills, all of which had different methods of death. All were depicted in gruesome detail. The three figures in the foreground seemed almost lost among them- a small figure, like that of a child, whose face had not beem drawn yet, cowering behind a very tall one who was wearing dark robes and without a visible head, with an evil-looking crown seemingly floating above the starlike glint of pencilled eyes. The third was the one being choked. A woman with only half her face drawn who seemed to be on the bridge of unconsciousness, and in pain. Various objects were strewn about them- shards of a shield, a full shield with a horse depicted on it, and a melancholy-looking helm upturned in the grass.
A few students said they would be sick because of the gruesome detail.*
[[I gave up with the slight hints to what the drawing was and went full blast. Gaah, she's acting JUST like me in this post!]]
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