In which Erys finds herself in big trouble

'Bitch!' the word, like a slap, shot out of the mouth of a sneering troublemaker, or to be precise, Frizzy Pink Hair. Erys had seen a fair of them, and this one decided that frizzy pink hair was for her, thus, Erys christened her Frizzy Pink Hair.

Erys opened her eyes and promptly closed them again. She had gleaned enough information off that one glance. This classmate wasn't happy with her, but who was? The poor-excuse-for-a-fashion had three of her lackeys standing behind her. Erys could recognise them...Droopy-Eyes, Short Skirt and Nose-Ring all of them wore exactly the same hairstyle down to the last frizzy curl.

Their eyes were egging her on. Erys couldn't be bothered with them. The interruptions and confrontations before or in between classes were becoming a routine in this school. Especially when they couldn't accept that she, Erys, of no parentage, without a single cent to her name whatsoever, was in this school, and worse of all, she wasn't likely to be embarrassed by those facts.

'Pay attention!' Frizzy Pink Hair slammed her hand on Erys' desk.

'What do you want?' Erys drawled without opening her eyes. 'Good little girls should be at their desks before teacher comes.'

'Why you...' The girl turned red.

'Do us both a favour: Go away and shut up,' Erys suggested. 'Wait, no,' she opened one eye, 'Shut up, then go away.'

The tension in the classroom tightened to near snapping point. The rest of the students in the classroom edged away towards the door nervously.

'What did you say?!' demanded Frizzy Pink Hair. Behind her, on cue, her friends cracked their knuckles meaningfully. Erys sighed inwardly. The gutless bunch never do learn, do they?

Frizzy Pink Hair thrust her hand at Erys' shoulder, and yanked her up by her collar.

Erys swiped the girl's hand away, causing Frizzy Pink Hair to stagger backwards. 'You really don't get it do you?' Erys' hand tightened to a fist. 'Should I spell it out for you? S-H-U-T-U-P-A...'

Frizzy Pink Hair shrieked and threw herself at Erys. Erys sidestepped and punched her side. The second punch landed on the girl's face. The girl spun towards her lackeys, screaming.

Then, hissing, she rushed towards Erys, meaning to claw her with her fingernails, but Erys caught her arms and threw the girl back towards her friends.

'Had enough?' Erys yawned. She had her share of fights and this one was starting to bore her.

The lackeys started to advance towards Erys.

'And what are you doing?' the stern-faced homeroom teacher demanded as he appeared at the doorway of the classroom.

Clutching her bruised cheek, Frizzy Pink Hair staggered forward in a made-up pitiful motion.

'What happened to you?' The teacher snapped at her.

'She hit me,' complained the girl.

The teacher narrowed his eyes. 'Who?' he asked.

'That bit...Erys,' she corrected quickly. 'Nameless...sir.'

'Nameless?' the teacher stared at Erys. 'Nameless! How dare you go about beating up girls...' he was going to say “richer than you”, Erys was positive.

Erys walked up to the teacher and looked down from her nose at him. 'I don't regret it,' she said and left the classroom.

Students scattered before her. She was big trouble with capital “T”, and the whole school knew that.

She was Erys Nameless; Erys was what she called herself and Nameless was what the orphanage had registered her as. Actually, officially, her name was Norma Nameless. Erys snorted as she recalled her days at the orphanage. They treated her like a joke, giving her a name like that...She was not an orphan, she hoped. Someday, Erys thought, she would find her family. Her family simply lost her. 'Why didn't they look for you then?' a nasty voice inside her commented. The Erys inside her was a cruelly sensible person.

Erys exited the school building and headed towards a mound nearby that overlooked the school and part the town.

From the ring of trees that crowned the top of the mound, she could see the bright yellow buildings of the school. The pavement was well-swept – always clean, always free of anything.

Rows of gleaming, well-kept houses sat along roads running parallel to the school, with equally clean pavements. These were the homes of the well-off middle-class.

Beyond that, though invisible from this part of the town, were run-down buildings with roofs that were missing many tiles, and leaked whenever it rained. Some even had whole roofs missing, many windows broken, and doors that swung on its hinges-- they were mostly abandoned buildings, the previous occupants having been forced out because of the economic drift between different social classes.

After she had ran away from the orphanage, she had lived in one of these buildings. The welfare officers promised to leave her alone if she, in turn, promised to attend school without fail. And so here she was, stuck in school, with all her fees paid by the government so that she couldn't say she had no money for an education.

She never promised not to skip classes though.

The wind gently caressed Erys' cheeks as she closed her eyes. When she held out her hands, she could almost feel ribbons of air stream between her fingers and twined around her arms and under her hair.

Erys smiled with pleasure. The wind had always been her friend. She remembered that once, when she was in trouble at orphanage, somehow a gust of wind had knocked over bullies as they advanced towards her. There were many instances where such things occurred. And everytime, it always felt as though the wind assisted her.

The faint ringing of the last bell reminded her of where she was.

Erys opened her eyes and walked towards the school. The classroom was empty when she entered it, all the students having hastily abandoned the classroom when school had ended.

Erys picked up the scattered belongings on her desk and pushed them into her duffel bag. Slinging it across her back, she quickened her pace to the entrance of the school.

Someone was waiting by her locker.

Erys' mouth quivered between a smile and a frown. It was a stringy girl with her pale thin hair coiled tightly into two straight braids. She looked up from her shoes with watery blue eyes when Erys approached.

Erys recognised the girl as the source of her troubles with the Frizzy Pink Hair gang earlier.

The girl looked nervous as Erys opened her locker and dragged out her ragged fur coat out. It was warm this time of the year of course, but Erys had worn it out of habit. The girl jumped as Erys slammed her locker shut.

Erys glanced at the girl as she pulled the coat over her. 'What do you want?' Erys asked.

'I just want to thank you...for what you did. Thank you!' the girl blurted her words out in one breath and ran away.

'It's not as if I did it for you,' Erys muttered under her breath. And that was true. Her favourite hobby was opening lockers and swiping things that appealed to her. Today, she had found the girl's love letter to one of the senior boys inside Frizzy Pink Hair's locker (apparently, opening other people's lockers was probably Frizzy Pink Hair's hobby as well, Erys had thought smugly). Scrawled across the neat letter were words of profanities and warnings to the girl to stay away from the boy, and signed by hers truly. Apparently Frizzy Pink Hair planned to deposit the intercepted letter in the girl's locker but Erys had came along, took the letter and delivered it to the boy just to see everyone's reaction. And the senior had jawed at Frizzy Pink Hair for her mean actions.

Erys waited until the girl disappeared out of her view before making her way to the vacant park a couple of miles away from the school. Like the rest of the neighbourhood surrounding it, it was dismal; the flowers had long dried out, weeds ran amok amongst the grass and all that was left of the once neat landscape was a few scrubby bushes and trees and a shallow pond with nothing in it.

Erys picked one of the cleaner benches and sat on it. From here, she could see the orphanage where she had lived in until recently. Smudged-face children ran around the playground, laughing and screaming.

For a long while, she sat there, staring blankly at the orphanage, at the few cars that sometimes pass by and at the sun setting behind the orphanage.

Immersed in nothingness, she had scarcely realised that it was dark, until the clicking sound of street lights switching on interrupted her reverie. She got up slowly and made her way home.

Tonight, she took the shorter route across the cemetery. She had nicked a few ten-dollar notes from Frizzy Pink Hair's locker and thought of popping into the supermart for dinner on her way home. Usually she'd beg the lunch ladies for some older uncooked food for her dinner and breakfast, and they were decent ladies, who'd pack leftover lunches for her too.

Except for the sound chirping of crickets, the cemetery was still and quiet. Then, a breeze blew through the leaves of the trees that were scattered around the area. The air felt different, yet vaguely familiar to Erys. She frowned to herself.

Then it happened.

It sounded like several things dragging themselves across the ground. A pungent smell permeated the wind which had picked up and turned into almost a gale.

Erys turned her head towards the source of the sound. In the darkness, she could make out dark forms coming towards her. They were hunched figures with twisted faces. Their mouths seemed to be moving, but only long groans reached her ears.

Erys felt her heart beating fast. It had been a while since such emotions ran through her veins. She could almost hear the winds whispering for her to run as they tried to push back the strangers...Or it could have been her cowardly heart that had suggested it.

The groans were howls now. Erys saw their skin green and rotting with maggots wriggling in many places. Where the eyes were supposed to be, were hollow bleeding gaps-- black blood that ran down the cheeks like tears.

And she them for what they were-- ghouls, zombies, and all things undead.

Erys could not bear the fear they emanated any longer. She turned and ran, jumping over some headstones and tripping over others. The distance between them, however, seemed to diminish at an alarming rate.

At last, Erys sprawled over a freshly dug grave and could not get up from her exhaustion.

The ground beneath her trembled, and a fist pushed out of the earth and flailed about to grab onto her. Erys screamed as she scrambled away from the grave. The zombies were around her now. The gale became stronger. As Erys sank into the darkness surrounding her, she felt a sensation that was almost as if she was flying.

When her sight returned, it was dawn with the touches of pink just kissing the rim of purple plains. Erys stared at the strange bare land around her.

'Oh, Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore,' she muttered to herself.