Jenny and Fred

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Jenny has a friend called Fred, sharing a room together at the school. 

The school is queer. Rows upon rows of portable, temporary buildings with their corrugated iron rooftops. The dormitories were the same, albeit smaller, where each little space was occupied by two little children. 

There were many children at this school, but only one curriculum. All the children were the same age, and were taught the same things. 

Jenny is friends with Fred, and they skipped down together towards the long breakfast hall. As they walked, they chatted in the idle time, about nothing and everything, the way children do. Around them, other pairs of children were also making their way over towards the dining halls, like little ants dutifully going towards the scent of food.

At breakfast, they sat in the rows of wooden benches that lined the wooden tables. Jenny and Fred sat where they always sat and waited for breakfast to be served. Baskets of toast were passed around the tables, along with little pats of creamy butter. Jenny liked her toast still slightly soft in the middle, with a little crunch to help spread melting butter on. She liked her toast solely with the fresh, golden butter. Fred like his browned all over, crunchy and messy with crumbs, lavishly covered with chocolate spread. He said he liked how the sweet, creamy spread paired with the slightly nutty flavour of browned bread. There was toast and spread every morning.

Today, they also had other hot foods. It was bacon day, which meant that there was crisp pieces of bacon and fragrant fried eggs. Fred didn’t like bacon day, so he ate some more of his toast. Jenny liked most foods, so she filled her plate carefully and returned to her seat. Fred’s favourite mornings were the pancake mornings. He liked bacon and syrup on his pancakes and Jenny had to agree that it was a winning combination, even though she still liked butter and syrup on pancakes more. Fred did not like eggs. Fred thought that eggs smelt like farts. Jenny thought that farts smelt like eggs. Regardless, Jenny enjoyed the eggs.

The breakfast system was nice because nobody disliked toast, and so if they did not fancy the hot food, they could always just eat toast. 

After breakfast, they lined up dutifully according to their numbers. Jenny and Fred lined up together because they had consecutive numbers, which was also why they shared a dormitory. Everyone’s numbers were printed plainly on their cheeks, and sometimes tall, tall people holding clip boards would call them by their numbers. 

The lines snake out quite far, as there were many children. But the process was quick and efficient, like the passing of information along the line of an ant trial.

As they lined up, they waited to be given their juice. The juice was very yummy, but everyone only got a little at the end of breakfast. 

At school they learnt a lot of things. Fred really liked learning, but Jenny wasn’t a big fan. Fred preferred to spend his time reading, whereas Jenny preferred to spend her time talking to the other children, or pestering Fred. They were in the same class, with eighteen other children. All the classes were taught exactly the same way, with a whiteboard that wrote its own letters and spoke calmly through speakers. The same lesson was simply given to all the different whiteboards.

Jenny was friendly with all the other children in her class, but since Fred was more reserved, he was mostly friendly with his books. Everyone’s grades were posted on a leader board following each test. Jenny did not know everyone’s number codes, but she knew that Fred was always towards the top of the leader board. It was strange how, although they were all growing up exactly the same way, everyone was a little bit different. 

The classrooms were neat and pristine, with homely white curtains framing the frosted glass windows, and the seats and tables orderly spread out to ensure that all pupils had clear view of the white board. 

The children did not ask any questions during class, as there was nobody to answer them. However, they often asked questions to one another, and there was a bookshelf in each classroom filled with wonderful information for anybody to read. Fred very much liked the books.

At lunchtime, the children went back to the dining halls. Jenny walked with Fred, so that he wouldn’t need to walk alone, to tell him about all the other children in the class and what he had missed. Besides, although Jenny liked the rest of her classmates, she liked Fred most of all.

Lunch time was similar to breakfast. Each day was similar to the last. Very rarely did anything change. However, this lunchtime, as they walked over, a trail of little bugs caught her eye. 

The trail was small, and the bugs were common, but she couldn’t quite figure out what they were. She just couldn’t seem to remember what they were called. 

The little bugs followed each other, snaking through a long, winded path going somewhere or another. Jenny did not know where they were going. She didn’t suppose that Fred knew either. So she didn’t ask. Fred didn’t like bugs anyway. 

Something made her want to follow the little trial of crawling insects. She tugged at Fred’s sleeve, asking him to follow with her, when she realised that his arm was bleeding. Fred seemed surprised; barely recognising the situation. Jenny wondered where the bleeding was coming from, but Fred was not allowed to roll up his sleeves to show her. 

They decided that it might be best to go to the infirmary to get him sorted. But here, they reached a problem. Although they knew there was an infirmary, they could not remember where it was. Everyone else had already reached the dining hall, so there was nobody to ask.

They thought that maybe it was close to the dormitories or to the playground. Children were mostly likely to need medical assistance there. So they headed towards the playground.

The air felt queer and still. As they walked along, Jenny noticed that the little bugs gathered around the spots of blood dripping from Fred’s arm. Did they usually do that? She did not know. But they seemed to be following the trail as they walked towards the playground. 

Her vision seemed to be getting worse, splotches of darkness and dimness clouding it.

A heavy feeling settled in her stomach and prickled the back of her neck. Her skin started to feel clammy as an unknown sensation washed over her. Where had Fred gone?

She stopped, feeling her stomach heave with the remnants of her breakfast, wanting to come back up. 

A sour sting trickled out her mouth.

Slowly, she staggered along, single-mindedly following the ant trail.

Ah, that’s right; they were ants.

Had Fred gone ahead? A thick line of splattered blood was swarmed with ants, and she wearily followed along it. 

Her head ached terribly, her vision occasionally blurring ahead of her.

The ants lead towards the sandpit, where huge ant mounds rose up from the reddish sand.

Red sand?

Was sand normally red?

She could barely see it anyway. The ground was blanketed in the ants, crawling, crawling, crawling.

As she approached the mounds, they seemed to frenzy around the blood. 

Blood?

Mounds cannot appear from thin air. There was a hollow in the ground, just large enough to fit a child-sized body.

Jenny couldn’t tear her eyes away, no matter how desperately she tried. 

Her feet dragged her step by step, compelling her towards a sickening, rotting stench, until she stood at the very edge.

Staring back at her, his mangled, decomposing body smiled,

“Hi Jenny.”