Vip, p.1
VIP, page 1
VIP
_______________________
DANNY NICHOLAS
An Archer Publishing Book
Washington, D.C.
VIP
Published by Archer Publishing
815 Thayer Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20910
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2023 by Danny Nicholas
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Archer Publishing ISBN
978-1-959838-12-8
VIP
Hello, neighbor. It’s me again, li’l Freddie Blake in room D37. I haven’t talked to you in a while. It isn’t my fault. The medicine they make me take makes me real sleepy. I guessed they found out I wasn’t sleeping anymore. I thought I tricked them. They must sneak the pills inside my dinner. I’m going to have to stop eating again.
My birthday was two days ago. I’m six years old now, if you didn’t know. I bet if they let me go to the county fair, I’d be tall enough now to ride the Whip-Lasher and other big kid rides. The nurses gave me a piece of cake. It was sugar-free and tasted like bubble-bath soap on stale bread. My parents couldn’t make it again. I think the doctors won’t let them near me anymore. Not even on my birthday. I’m too dangerous, they say. Well, I say they are a bunch of big booger heads. Hah! What do you think?
Maybe they’re right, though. Sometimes I get a little dis...dis-co--disco-bob-U-lated. Is that the right word? I heard one of the doctors use it.
I never used to be disco-bob-U-lated, you know. I’m good at reading. It was math I wasn’t so good at. I could’ve skipped kindergarten and that whole nightmare if it wasn’t for those stupid numbers.
Did I tell you this story before? I might’ve. If I did, I probably wasn’t myself at the time. So, you can forget whatever I told you, because, this time it’s the truth.
My kindergarten teacher was an octopus monster ...
I wasn’t sure at first. I thought it was my imagination. My mom tells me I daydream too much. She says my head is always in the clouds. I’m not quite sure what that means. Do I have superpowers? Could my head bounce from the ground up into the sky? If it could, it hasn’t happened yet, no matter how hard I try. But, I knew Ms. Tillinghast was a monster the day I woke up during nap-time, when everyone was supposed to be asleep.
Just before then, Ms. Tillinghast took us outside to play a math game. In the game, you ran around to catch a ball someone threw up in the air, and when you caught it, she asked you a math problem. If you couldn’t answer it, you had to step outside the circle, giving up your turn. And the last person left was the VIP for next week ... VIP stands for Very Important Person. Being a VIP was neat because you got to wear a big gold star sticker on your shirt, you helped pass out papers for the teacher, and you could play with the dinosaur toys at recess. Everybody wanted to play with them because the rest of the class could only play with them on Fridays.
All right, so...at nap-time, everyone was asleep, but I wasn’t tired because I was one of the first ones out of the circle. I’m so dumb at math. I make bad grades on all the tests, and my dad isn’t very happy about it.
So, I wasn’t sleepy at all. But I made myself fall asleep for a while—then, I woke up.
I opened my eyes for a second, and then closed them trying to go back to sleep. And I probably would have, if I didn’t hear that noise. It sounded squishy, like the sound your shoe makes when it gets stuck in the mud, except it was in the classroom.
The spot where my mat was, it was kind of in the corner of the floor. I was behind Jordan Fischer. He’s a tubby kid. But I think he saved me, ’cause she couldn’t catch me looking with Jordan asleep in front of me like he was. So, I looked up a little. Ms. Tillinghast sat behind her desk, but she was turned completely around. The back of her head was facing the classroom, which really kept me from falling back to sleep. The sounds I could ignore. But with her turned around like that, not looking at us, made me scared. When you can’t see someone’s face you can’t tell how they’re feeling. You don’t know whether they’re happy to see you, or if they’re upset...or if they are hungry.
She sat behind the desk for a few minutes, turned around like that, with that squishy sound coming from somewhere, and then she stood up. But she stood up funny. She didn’t use her legs at all. She just sort of lifted up in the air like a helicopter over the edge of her chair. And then she floated down, her feet touching the floor again. And she did all of this facing backwards.
She moved around from her desk, but again, she never used her legs. I never saw her knees bend underneath her long skirt. I guessed she was on roller-skates, because it looked like she was skating across the floor. Then she floated over to Travis Judson. I used to play basketball with Travis on weekends, but I stopped hanging around with him because he kept hogging the ball. But that doesn’t mean I hated him or anything, because I really felt bad to see what happened to him.
Ms. Tillinghast stood over Travis as he slept on his mat. Then…I really don’t know how exactly. Okay, so, you know how some people could bend their fingers backwards and it looks really gross? What is that called? Yeah, double-jointed. Well, can some people be double-jointed in their backs? How come Ms. Tillinghast could bend her back like that? She did. She bent backwards toward Travis. I heard her bones popping, her fingers wiggled-wobbled up and down, moving like spider-legs. Her black hair fell from her backwards face and hung over Travis enough to touch his cheek. I thought he’d wake up, but he didn’t.
I lifted my head up, but not too much; Jordan’s shoulder was still in my way. She began sniffing the air above Travis, but I’m not sure how she could smell with her body all flipped-floppy around and her nose sort of behind her head now.
Then she lifted off again, high enough that the top of her head knocked on the Styrofoam ball solar system hanging from the ceiling.
Things crawled out of her skirt.
They weren’t tentacles, really. They kind of reminded me of once when I took my mom’s paper shredder and I turned it over and shook out what was in the bin, and a bunch of tangled piles of knotted paper came falling out of it. What came spilling from Ms. Tillinghast’s skirt looked like that. I guess they were tentacles. I mean, does that sound like tentacles to you? Well…the stuff from her dress acted like tentacles. They squeezed around Travis’ body.
Then she started to slurp.
Big sucking sounds as if she was drinking through a straw.
The noises made me so sick; my stomach was turning over itself. I started shuffling around in my floor mat, I couldn’t stop myself.
Suddenly, the head of black hair flipped up; her backwards face looking in my direction.
She caught only a glimpse of me turning over, and I tried to pretend I was asleep.
The slurping stopped.
I was lying with my eyes closed.
Then she stood over me.
Sniffing.
I felt the strands of her hair on the back of my neck, tickling me. I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t her hair. I hate to think about it, but what if it wasn’t her hair at my neck? What if it was those tentacles coming from her dress, wrapping around me, trying to slurp?
She moved away. I kept my eyes shut. But I stayed awake, hearing more gooey sounds.
Then it was quiet.
I heard the snap of the light switch, and I quickly flipped over to look at Travis.
Ms. Tillinghast clapped her hands, walking around, telling everyone in a friendly voice to wake up. And she looked like—well, like she had before: she looked like our teacher again.
Travis didn’t wake up. Jordan started to get up, he blocked my view, and when he finally moved, Ms. Tillinghast was over Travis. This time the normal way, back bent over him the way you’re supposed to. She shook his shoulders asking him nicely to wake up. He blinked his eyes and then he smiled. Ms. Tillinghast smiled, too. She patted him on the head and went to stand in front of the class. And as she was telling us to get ourselves ready to go to the library, she glanced at me. She was smiling at everybody else, but in her eyes looking at me, she had something nasty in them.
My stomach started to hurt.
Everyone stood on numbered dots stuck on the floor, going from one to twenty, and I was number eleven.
My stomach made a sick noise and Janie Summers, who stood in front of me, gave me a nervous look.
The whole class went marching down the hall. Ms. Tillinghast led us, holding her finger to her lips, reminding everyone to remain quiet. I couldn’t help it. I barfed. I nearly threw up on Janie’s pants. The whole front of my shirt was covered in stinky yellow water.
Ms. Tillinghast was almost afraid to come near me. And I thought, maybe, I could cough up some more smelly water and cover the rest of me in it, and she would never, ever, come near me again.
She s
I BET you have a lot of questions. Boy, I’ve heard them all before. I know it’s hard to believe, so I must be lying.
You must’ve already hated Ms. Tillinghast, they say. No, I honestly didn’t. Really, I liked her more than some of the other boys in class did. A lot of them made fun of her name. Tillinghast. Till-in-GAS. You know, like, making a joke about farting.
Or, why didn’t anyone else wake up during nap-time if there were so much of those nasty noises? They asked me that, as though they think they have me outsmarted, as if I didn’t have an answer. Well, there were the animal crackers she gave us before nap-time. They might’ve been poisoned, I say. I didn’t eat any. Maybe, that’s why I was the only one who woke up.
Then those same people who asked these questions become upset and tell me: Not much of what I say makes any sense.
Of course, it doesn’t make any sense, she was an octopus monster. Why would any of this make sense?
The one thing that did make sense was: Why, out of the entire class, did she attack Travis first?
At the time I thought he was just unlucky to be sleeping nearer to the teacher’s desk. But, I think I know why she picked him. It was because he was the VIP that week. I believe that because the next one she took was the VIP for the week after. That was Janie Summers, because she won the math game I told you about. Ms. Tillinghast grabbed her at nap-time too, and started slurping.
I must have been jealous, the psy-kia-twists would argue. About them being VIPs for the class.
If I ever did want to be a VIP, I wouldn’t want to be one anymore. If you were picked as one, you wouldn’t be yourself anymore. You wouldn’t even be a kid. You were something else. You were one of hers. You looked like you. You looked like a kid. But, when the lights were off you looked like something else. When the lights were shut off for nap-time, Travis and Janie didn’t look like themselves anymore. Their skin...it was different with the lights off. Their skin looked like rotten Rice Crispy Treats left out in the sun.
Then the people who usually ask the questions would get tired and start blaming the things I saw on TV or read in books. It didn’t matter how much I swore the scariest thing I’ve ever read was Clifford the Big Red Dog. I mean he’s a giant dog, right? What if he got rabies and started eating people and wreck up the neighborhood?
I remember a doctor asking me if Ms. Tillinghast looked like a witch? Like, the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz? And I told him, no. She didn’t look like a witch. She wasn’t really a lady either. I thought she was a monster in the shape of a lady, until I saw her change into something else.
I was lying down in my same place behind Jordan, watching them in back of the class, by the teacher’s desk. They were just standing there in a circle. All three of them were making the squishy sounds.
Then they all raised their hands like they were in church praying to God, and then they started to dance in place. Flakes of Janie and Travis’s skin jumped off and went all over the floor, and they started to shouting funny things—like sort of in a different language.
I’m not sure if I can say some of the words without stammering. Aw, I can’t say it right. “Nie-yah-left you-tep?” And, wooo, this next one is harder: “Yah—yeh—yeh.” Hold on I can get it, “Yarh-gah-sah-thah-off.” That was really hard to say, but the three of them could say those names as easily as I’m talking to you. They also said something about a goat with a thousand legs. Isn’t that funny? What would a goat do with a thousand legs?
So, okay, they’re in a circle, praying, and then Ms. Tillinghast starts to float up in the air.
She started to change.
Her whole body got fatter; her head grew into a balloon, stretching from her neck. It changed into…I’m not sure if I can even explain it right. I don’t know. I guess if it looked like anything, I guess, her face kind of looked like Snuffleupagus’ head, you know, from Sesame Street? You know how Snuffleupagus has this big, fat head and a long trunk? It was like that, except the trunk was her neck. And she had the same eyes like Snuffleupagus, too; big wide eyes on top of the head, with bushy eyelashes, never blinking, and sort of always looking dumb at you. But she wasn’t brown like Snuffleupagus. She was more the color of The Grinch who stole Christmas, but not as furry. She was hairy, not like a dog, more like a gorilla. I don’t know; even if you gave me a sheet of paper I wouldn’t be able to draw a picture for you.
All of her gross tentacles came wiggling out of her skirt, and roped themselves around Janie and Travis, all the way up to their faces, and the slurping started again. Another tentacle found its way to Mr. Jenkins’ home. Mr. Jenkins was the class’s pet goldfish who sat on Ms. Tillinghast’s desk. Her tentacle dunked into the fishbowl, grabbed Mr. Jenkins until...well, until the water in the fishbowl became dirty with pink ooze bleeding everywhere. Then, the water was sucked out in one bubbly gulp.
Everything became silent after. Everyone returned to their places. I shut my eyes until I heard the lights switch on.
For the rest of the class, we learned about the alphabet used playing cards. Everyone was paired up, and you had to name an animal that started with the same letter shown on the card. I was paired with Travis. I couldn’t look at him in the eye, and he knew why.
In the back of the class, Samuel Bloch made a fuss and was told to go to the front office. A teddy bear was taken out of his Good Behavior pouch hanging from the chalkboard. You had three little bears in your pouch and if you had all of them taken away, you were in time out. I remembered when that was the worst thing to be afraid of in kindergarten, before I found out about being a VIP.
At the end of class, Ms. Tillinghast called me over to her desk.
My heart started pounding; I couldn’t hear anything else in my ears. I stood at her desk and she smiled at me as she was grading papers. Her eyes, though, they didn’t like me.
I asked her about Mr. Jenkins’ empty fishbowl. Well, Mr. Jenkins wasn’t feeling very well, she told me. And she brought the goldfish to the school nurse, and hopefully by tomorrow he will feel better.
She was lying. And she knew I could tell.
Then she said she’d been looking over my grades and they were very good. She had great news for me.
Congratulations, she said. Next week, I was going to be the class VIP.
She smiled at me. Big smile.
She reached into her desk, and brought out the gold star sticker.
I became so scared, I couldn’t breathe.
She peeled the sticker off the wax paper, and went to stick it on my shirt, and that was when...
I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you? Oh, you remembered me telling you this part. Yeah, I used the fishbowl. I swiped it off her desk, and smashed it against her face. The glass went everywhere. And everyone screamed.
Do you remember what I told you what I did with the Earth globe? Oh, I must’ve forgot. She wasn’t dead. So, I took the globe because it was the only thing on the desk that looked heavy enough. And as she was on the floor, I knocked her on the head pretty hard with it.
Travis grabbed me by the arm to try to stop me, and I punched him in the nose. And while I was hitting Ms. Tillinghast, Jordan ran to the class next door, and Mr. Atwood came in, and he dragged me away.
I wasn’t allowed into school ever again because of my freak-out.
Afterwards there was a lot of business with psy-kia-twists and lawyers. My mom cried so much. I felt awful about that. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I just wanted to stay alive and not become one of Tillinghast’s favorites. Boy, did my mom cry a lot.
This place isn’t as bad as I thought it’d be. And including you, I’ve made plenty of friends. There’s a swimming pool and a basketball court, and there’s a ping-pong table! Believe it or not, I’m the best player in the whole hospital. I’m even better than Mr. Harley who says his ping-pong paddle is his wife and takes it everywhere with him, even to his room.
