8/18/06

Rathbone Private Academy Brad Walker “Self-Control”

(Part I of II)

Quietly, second-year student Annette Baudelaire crept into her dormitory bedroom, late one Thursday night; carefully closing the door behind her, so as not to wake her roommate—Elaine Cartwright—who was asleep in her bed nearby. Really, it was no longer Thursday night any longer; it was well past three a.m., making it, more correctly, very early Friday morning. Silently, Annette changed out of her clothes—a strangely designed, black dress and matching hat; both drenched with the late-October rain—and changed into her nightclothes. Then she packed the clothes she had worn into a trunk at the foot of her bed and preceded to remove the thick layers of make-up from her face. When all of these chores were completed (and without disturbing Elaine in the slightest), she finally climbed into her bed, for a few meager hours of sleep before her first class of the day.

Annette Baudelaire trudged to her first class of the day in and undead state one drizzly Friday morning in late October. She was very tired, as she had not gotten much sleep the night before. That was nothing new to her though; most nights she found herself unable to sleep and thus trudging around the vast premises of Rathbone Private Academy.

It was her second year at the prestigious boarding school. Her father was the CEO of a well-established meat distributing company and her stepmother disliked her rather greatly; so Annette had both the means and the purpose for spending her defining years at a stuffy, New England boarding school. Needless to say, she was more than a little bitter with her family, which led to the development of her rather cynical outlook on life in general.

It was raining that morning, though just enough to dampen her thick red hair, tied into two rather large ponytails with bits of black ribbon. She wore a brown-leather trench coat that was standard issue to all students at the academy, which shielded her maroon-and-beige uniform from the precipitation.

Every day, her roommate, Elaine, would force her awake before she left for her first class (which was a good distance across the campus, and thus she took and early start). Annette would slowly but steadily ready herself for the day, in a half-conscious daze, as she, of course, never got any sleep. First classes were at 7:00 a.m.; Annette’s punctuality would depend on her mood and general state-of-mind on that particular day.

As she was nearing the building where her first class of the day was held, Annette heard something that shook her out of her zombie-like state. It sounded like muffled screaming, coming from ahead of her—past her destination. She glanced at her watch; it was 6:45. I have a little of time to kill, she thought to herself before walking past the building she had been headed for, towards a small, secluded courtyard where she thought she heard the noise coming from.

Standing on the outskirts of the courtyard, in an alleyway created by two buildings positioned closely together, Annette looked on at the scene transpiring in the center of the small, unattended-to gathering place. A girl, who—judging by her height and rather busty build—was probably a third-year student, had be cornered by three young men of undeterminable age. One of them was restraining her arms, another had his hands planted firmly on her ample bosom and his tongue sliding down her throat, and the third stood a few feet away with his pants unzipped, masturbating as he watched the other take advantage of the girl.

The sight of such an atrocity ignited something with Annette, who suffered from a rather crippling desire to help those in need. So, instead of running to get someone in a position of authority to take care of the situation, she picked up a nearby chunk of concrete that had broken loose from the decaying sidewalk and hurled it across the courtyard at the young man standing off to the side with his pants unzipped.

“You stupid fuckin’ pricks!” She screamed. “It’s not like the school officials aren’t looking for any reason to take away the academy’s coed status! Now you’ve gotta go and do something fucking retarded like rape some girl! Ya know, I can understand how a person can get really sexually frustrated at a place like this, where there’s no possibility of getting a moment alone with the opposite sex under the omnipresent gaze of the administration—but I seriously have no mercy for sociopaths!”

They all gawked at Annette as she raised several kinds of hell and when it seemed she had at least temporarily halted her shrieking they all burst into laughter, with the exception of the boy who had been masturbating—who was now bleeding about the head—and the girl—who was still had absolutely no reason to laugh about anything for any reason (in fact, on the totally opposite end of things, she was crying rather profusely… not that that sort of behavior would be unusual or uncalled for her in her situation). But the two remaining boys (the one who was restraining the girl and the one who was readying to rape her) laughed hardily at the spectacle Annette was making of herself.

“Oh, haha! Yeah, you must think this is hilarious! Fucking hilarious!” Annette continued to rave. “Yeah, ‘cause who am I? Just some dumbass, second-year girl with red hair who’s probably gonna get what’s coming to her here in a second, right? … Well, isn’t that what you’re all thinking?”

“Well, uhh… yeah, actually.” One of the young men replied, climbing off of the third-year girl who remained contained by the other boy. He turned to face Annette with his arms folded across his chest and his member fully exposed and still erect, pointing itself at her.

Annette cackled wildly at the sight of the young man’s genitals. “What? Am I supposed to be terrified?” She chuckled. “Impressed?” She went on to taunt him further. “You’re gonna get me with your scary little man-penis! Oh no!”

She had succeeded in building up his rage. “You’d better watch your goddamn mouth little girl, or else—”

She abruptly interrupted him. “Or else you’ll do to me what you were gonna do to her?” She inquired, taking a playful tone, which made her sound as if she was making a joke.

“Oh no. I’m gonna do you way worse that I’m gonna do her.” He assured her.

“Really now? Then bring it on little man!” She coaxed him on, as she jumped onto a nearby picnic table, putting her above him and giving her a sense of power. “’Cause I’ll tell ya right now, I’ll fuck your whole world up, you stupid mother fucker!” She exclaimed, pointing a closed umbrella—which she had pulled out of the picnic table—at him threateningly.

“You asked for it, bitch!” The young man replied, as he began to charge at her. He lunged at her. Quickly she jabbed the umbrella into his Adam’s apple, knocking him back a ways, cursing and choking all the while. Annette jumped down from the table, and swung the umbrella around, hitting him in the chest and knocking him to the ground. Once she had him down she cast the umbrella aside and stood on his stomach, kicking him repeatedly in the face. Then, remembering his fully exposed testicles, she turned around on his stomach and firmly planted her standard-issue, rubber-soled boot into his groin a number of times. He coughed and cursed and eventually started vomiting; that’s when Annette decided he had had enough and jumped down from on top of him.

She looked off to the corner of the courtyard, to the girl and the remaining young man. He was still restraining the third-year girl but looked on at Annette with both fear and amazement.

“… What, do you wanna go now or something?” She asked him. He shook his head. “Well good, ‘cause I don’t feel like doing that all over again. Now get the hell out of my sight; you’re a fuckin’ skid mark and you’re making me sick.”

And with that, the third young man took off, making sure to go around the long way to get out of the courtyard, so as not to pass to closely to Annette.

Annette looked around at the mess she’d help to make. The boy she’d thrown the piece of concrete at was still bleeding and crying and the boy she had had the melee with was writing on the ground in his own vomit. She looked over at the girl who had been the catalyst to this whole situation.

“Fuckin’ men.” Annette said. “I just don’t get it. All they seem to care about is violence and sex and if they can get ‘em both together, well then you’ve got yourself a goddamn party!”

The girl was still crying, but her tears had eased up a bit. Her mascara was running down all over he face, and in a very weak, pathetic voice she asked Annette “H-h-how… How did you do that?” in reference to laying waste to her attackers.

Annette let out a brief giggle. “I’m very violent.”

end