Children’s Safety Instructionals

By: Jordan Seifert

Beatrice Siskel found herself feeling flat. A strange hum had burned itself into her head, and she noticed that the world suddenly seemed both thinner and more washed out, like somebody had drained away all the colours. She felt nauseated, warbled sounds rushing past her, and somewhere, somebody was playing music. Some weird, upbeat jingle that she might not have even noticed if it weren’t so omnipresent. But to Beatrice, the strangest thing was the flickering white line, warped and curved to her vision, that seemed to run as far as she could see and then through the walls and maybe even further. Her bedroom had taken on a strange form. It looked identical, although washed out, but it felt like the beginning of something. Beatrice’s room was similar to the room of any other girl her age. A comfy, fluffy bed with two stuffed animals and a white bed spread with patterned edges jutted out into the center of her room, pressed against the wall. Two black metal posts stuck out from each end of her bed, descending to the floor where they curved off like paws. Her bookshelf was decidedly empty. Beatrice didn’t get much fun out of reading any more. She had a few books and she figured she’d read about half of them, or half of half of them if you didn’t count unfinished stories. The majority of her bookshelf was just space for more stuffed animals and china dolls, complimenting the plastic chain lined with stuffed friends that hung next to it. Beatrice’s friends were jealous of her large window which had a sill so big it doubled as a seat. Even at night there was ample amounts of light bouncing off the streets and into Beatrice’s room, casting dark shadows across her white washed walls and ceiling. And it was for exactly that reason that, on the table beside her bed, Beatrice kept a short green lamp. The frilled shade cast some shadows of its own, but they were familiar to her. They were like protector shadows, banishing the monsters built from trees and tall bushes.

Her head spinning, Beatrice clutched her long blonde hair and stepped into the kitchen of her four bedroom suburban house. ’Where are my parents?’ Beatrice thought. Maybe she’d gotten up too early, or maybe too late, but her parents were almost always there. Both her parents took turns with the cooking, and in between they’d work on their magnet projects. They enjoyed making fridge magnets to hold up the best of Beatrice’s school projects. Albeit, Beatrice wasn’t an amazing student, but she did well enough that her parents, and her teachers, recognized her abilities. The boys in her class hadn’t taken notice yet of her good looks, but on more than one occasion she’d been admired for saying something smart when the rest of the class was stuck up its own bum. The weird synthesized tune took on a more ominous tone, but it still seemed friendly in its own right. “Shit!” Beatrice shouted, unable to hear her own voice. “I left the stove on!” That time her screams came out loud and clear. She ran over to the oven and reached to turn it off. A pot of something, Beatrice wasn’t sure what, was bubbling, and just as she reached towards the knob to turn off the burner, an explosion of scorching hot liquid and broken glass blew out from inside the pot like a gunshot, tearing apart Beatrice’s arm. She didn’t hear it, or see it, or taste it, or smell it, but she felt it.

“Never play with the stove.”

Beatrice laid on the tiled floor, blood pooling around her. Her flesh had been torn to bits, chunks of muscle dotting the fridge and counter. Silently crying, she watched her own blood crawl across the square patterned tiles and make them disappear. The fuzzy white line blipped in and out for a moment, then returned. Struggling for breath, the young girl lifted herself off the floor and tripped towards the phone. ‘Where are my parents?’ Beatrice thought.

“Don’t play practical jokes It could get you in trouble.” The phone disappeared.

Beatrice stood more surprised than amazed, and more angry than surprised. The phone had just disappeared. Like a cheap special effect it had blipped away, and Beatrice felt new for a single moment. Not new like a new morning new, but new like a new person. Like she’d been replaced. She hobbled breathless out her cold, white front door and into the yard. Beatrice had spent the previous summer tidying the garden. Her front step was a dustless, leafless thing. Her gardens were perfectly groomed, every flower petal taken care of. Her grass, watered at regular intervals, was hunter green, a perfect sheet of nature’s blades. And dotting the landscape were two evergreen trees, the same ones which cast dark shadows which pressed against her ceiling and swayed back and forth. Now the lawn looked washed out and murky, most of it indistinguishable. Detail had gone by the wayside as well, Beatrice thought. It was really her parents yard, but it was Beatrice who had taken care of it. It was her thing. And now, where she had swept every morning, bits of blood and glass were spattering against the cement. Tears rolled down Beatrice’s cheeks.

Beatrice trudged across her lawn, but became distracted by the familiar rolling drone of the school bus. It stopped out front her door. Pssshhhhh, the door opened. Beatrice could see her bus driver, faceless, emotionless. The flat, faceless thing wore the same every-day cardigan, her washed out jeans turned from light blue to a colour that almost resembled a pastel sky. Her bus driver, a middle aged woman who had left them be for the most part. She went over bumps too fast because the kids liked to be tossed through the air, and she let them pick where they wanted to sit. Sometimes she even let the older students walk around while the bus was in motion. These were all things she could get in trouble for, but it was more important to her, she had often thought, that kids had a fun childhood than a safe one. She wasn’t particularly reckless, but she did things her own way. She had been reprimanded twice. It was Beatrice’s bus alright, but it was different. A student stepped off and stood on the sidewalk. He struck a pose, his hands planted at his waist.

“Don’t you ever,” he started, “play around the school bus.” He dropped down to his knees and fell under the front wheel of the bright yellow tomb. The bus driver closed the door and pulled forward just enough. Just enough so that the bus came on top of the student’s head and crushed it. Even from the distance she was at it, Beatrice could hear his skull crack apart, chunks of ear gunk mixed with blood and brain blowing like waxen vomit across the pavement. The song, the one coming from every direction, seemed to replace the air. Beatrice felt like she was breathing in the music, slowly choking to death on a sickly sweet synthesizer soundtrack. Her thin, ghostly white arm was still dripping blood. The white line that pressed outwards from the corner of her vision seemed to move in time with an audible buzzing. Beatrice blinked repeatedly in an attempt to drive it away, but failed.

As the bus drove off, Beatrice noticed something behind the massive evergreen that was plotted in her yard. It seemed so obvious, but a moment prior there was no way she could’ve seen it. Mustering what energy she had, she ran towards it.

“Don’t play alone.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Beatrice shouted. Again, she hadn’t heard it, but she had felt it. Like somebody had dropped a tincture of knowledge against her eardrum. The evergreen’s bark was muddy and incomprehensible, its needles a blob. But behind it, plain as day, were things better left unseen. “No!” Beatrice screamed again. Four naked legs, sawed at the knee, rested on the ground. Dug slightly into the lawn were two of her parents arms, steel rods jammed through them to hold them up. The arms moved inwards towards each other, forming a bridge between two hands. And, Beatrice found, her parents severed heads had been sewed to the locked fingers, trapped in a death kiss. Their eyes were stuck open, emotionless and sightless, staring into one another without comprehension. Beatrice puked.

“Listen to your parents, slut.”

The girl’s mind blanked. The buzzing and the warped music and the strange white line disappeared for just a moment as Beatrice tried to comprehend, in some way, what she was seeing. A fresh set of tears rolled down her cheeks and Beatrice turned to run. ’Somebody’s going to try to kill me,’ Beatrice thought. ’They’re going to kill me and turn me into a slut.’ Beatrice didn’t know what a slut was, but she had felt the word pass over her like that tincture drop again. She didn’t want to be a slut, whatever it was. Her legs crumbling beneath her, Beatrice ran across the street to her neighbour, Mrs. Welkin’s house. Mrs. Welkin was a widow with no children of her own. She treated herself more often than not to unhealthy dinners and new shoes. If her closet had twenty five blouses, it had a hundred and twenty five pairs of shoes. Beatrice had spent long days with Mrs. Welkin’s, who also enjoyed to bake, trying on shoes, walking around with high heels, and looking at china dolls. Beatrice had started to collect china dolls of her own after seeing Mrs. Welkin’s extensive collection. It filled two walls and four large glass cases. Their careful, handmade porcelain faces interested Beatrice. Mrs. Welkin’s were far more beautiful than her own, Beatrice thought. Hers were store bought, Mrs. Welkin’s had explained--manufactured. They hadn’t been ‘lovingly designed with acute precision by a master doll maker,’ so they weren’t as good. Beatrice loved Mrs. Welkin’s, and Mrs. Welkin’s loved Beatrice, but they both knew that the dolls, and the shoes, came first. Beatrice herself only owned a single pair of sneakers, now lined with splats of black blood.

The girl knocked on the door, huffing, still out of breath. “Mrs. Welkin’s!” she shouted. “My parents have been murdered! Mrs. Welkin‘s!” Mrs. Welkin’s hobbled down her two flights of stairs and came to the door, careful to take her time. ’My parents have been killed by the shadows,’ Beatrice thought. ’The shadows took them.’

“What is it, Beatrice? Are you in need of emergency assistance?” Mrs. Welkin’s asked. She wasn’t acting like herself. Her voice was loud and empty, like a bad actor. “You can call the police using 9-1-1.”

“I-I know that,” Beatrice said, whimpering. “Can you?”

“Can I what?”

“Can you call 9-1-1?”

“Suuuure,” Mrs. Welkin’s drawled. “Here, suck on this for a minute, slut.” Mrs. Welkin’s grabbed her purse from beside the door and opened it. Beatrice was used to this--Mrs. Welkin’s and her suckers. Mrs. Welkin’s purse seemed to belch. Its zipper had disappeared, and in its place Beatrice saw congealed flesh. The fat old woman tore through it, the sound of ripping flesh filling Beatrice’s ears, for a moment almost pushing out the omnipresent tune. A foul stench filled the room like coppery butter, thick and creamy, but metallic. Inside of Mrs. Welkin’s purse was a clotted lining of scab. Thick, pulsating, purple meat. Without batting an eye, the elderly woman reached in and pulled out a hunk of crusty thickness, a slick puss running down it. As she tore it from the wall of her purse it made an intense sucking sound, small pieces of it flaking off and into the air. Beatrice’s stomach turned as Mrs. Welkin’s held out the broken flesh in front of her.

“Don’t take gifts from strangers.”

Beatrice ran out of Mrs. Welkin’s door and into the empty street. The line in the corner of her eye stayed perfectly visible as the fuzzy world streaked around her. Her feet could barely carry her, blood still drip dropping as she scrambled away, no idea where she‘d go. And then, for a second time, the world blipped. Beatrice found herself in an indescribable place. A wall of purple. There was no ground beneath her or around her, and she could not see behind her. All Beatrice could see was purple. Like when she had broken her leg reading down by the old quarry and been kept in the hospital, transfixed to the ceiling with nothing to look at. She counted the dots in the asbestos tiling and, forgetting her count half way through, did it again. And then again. For days. She had sworn off reading, the experience thoroughly wrecked, but still occasionally picked up a book or two. Now she was in an empty place. An empty, washed out, purple place. The line had gone flat across her vision, no longer struck outwards like a snowy white curve of lightning. The music seemed to be playing directly into her ears. Blip. An impossibl length of words appeared, spread out across what looked like miles on the gigantic purple canvas. No matter how Beatrice moved, nothing changed. The words were stuck in front of her. There was no up or down or behind. She could turn and turn and still she was stuck staring forwards at the wall of words. She thought they might be more than miles across. Maybe thousands, or millions of miles across, so far away they were like the stars, untouchable. Impossible to grasp. Words that meant nothing but explained everything.

“Children’s Safety Instructionals - A Student Learning Tape. Property Of The Everest-Warren County School System.”