Post by cellerikun on Dec 6, 2006 12:47:04 GMT -5
WARNINGS: Implied sexual abuse; Diana-centric
Edited for Word filter: s*CENSORED* is inappropriate?
The grey light of the hallway fell over Diana's face as the doorway cracked open. She scowled as the restful darkness was burnt away, and her eyes opened in a squint; it was another one of those nights. The rest of the girls were already asleep; Wendy was away, sick in bed as usual. Meg's rhythmic breathing in the bunk beneath her was soft and muffled by the stuffed goat she was cuddled up with. Eleanor was probably asleep, but Diana was never sure; Amanda's piggish snoring rumbled in her lumpy barrel chest. The boys, in various states of dress and disarray, half-flopped out of their bunks still clinging to their broom handles. Susan and Olivia were too young to be thought of as really being alive, so asleep or awake didn't matter unless one or both were crying. Diana was the only child still awake, save one.
Clara's feet shuffled into the room.
The first time it had happened, Diana had been asleep, and was woken by Clara's quiet crying as she tried to slip into bed without anyone noticing. The younger girl had assumed she'd been sneaking about the house, filching sweets or some such, and Martha had whipped her soundly for her trouble and sent her back to bed.
Serves her right, Diana had thought, getting caught for something so stupid. She went back to sleep and thought nothing of it. That first time had been months ago.
Now, as Clara walked stiffly to her bunk, Diana watched the shadow of Mr. Hoffman slide like oil across the sliver of hallway lamplight and back toward his office for the third time this week. Clara rarely cried anymore; she hadn't in some time, really, but she always looked like she was about to start at any minute. She staggered across the room, only barely missing toys and drawing paper scattered along the floor, and folded into her own bunk in the corner.
She glared. Why did Clara always get to stay up late? The next day, Mr. Hoffman would call her name first when he called the roll for breakfast. He would tell her what a good girl she was, and how pretty she was, and how grown up she was becoming. He would stroke her pretty hair and tell her to smile and light up her lovely face. He would tell Martha that it really was time that Clara see a proper doctor, now that she was becoming a woman and would soon need to consider the gravity of a woman's body and its developments, and that she really ought to have a new dress made, she was growing right out of her cute, pink frock-- in all directions, it seemed. A young lady should wear something more her age.
But Clara would look away modestly, letting her hair-- which Mr. Hoffman said looked so much more grown-up since she trimmed it a bit-- fall demurely across her face, and say no, she wouldn't need any of those things. And Hoffman would laugh and pat her head, and say what a modest and humble thing she was, what a lovely wife she'd make one day.
And Diana would listen and feel positively disgusted. It was bad enough that Clara, whose beauty almost made her competition for Wendy's throne (it was lucky for everyone, Diana thought, that Wendy was far wiser and far more pure of heart-- not that Clara had any interest in playing with the "children" since Hoffman had taken such a liking to her), was Hoffman's invariable favorite, it just added insult to injury that she would be so revoltingly fake about it. Politely refusing a chance at a new dress; who did she think she was fooling?
Diana went back to sleep, lulled by muffled sobs across the dormitory.
***
That afternoon, when Clara's deplorable dog-and-pony show of humility was over, Hoffman declared it cleaning day, and sent the children off to clean the house. Diana was assigned to the play room. Clara was just cleaning the sick room again. All she ever did was scrub the examining table, Diana thought, scrubbing that same spot over and over. And yet the thing was never clean, even when no one had been sick on it for months at a time, Clara was always scrubbing away at those same spots but they were always there. Lazy little snipe, even with Hoffman right there beside her, she didn't have to clean properly-- any other child would be scolded for leaving such messes, but not Clara. Clara was wonderful, Clara was perfect. Not that it really mattered that she was a lazy housekeeper; Hoffman would take her into the sickroom halfway through to tell her how pretty she was, and Clara wouldn't have to finish her chores at all.
Diana ran the mop across the floor, train tracks dissolving in the cold, dingy water. Her reflection in the slick, wet wood was deplorable- dirty from scrubbing the walls and her sundress- an ugly, sunflower-yellow monstrosity that might as well have been made from some dying canary's feathers for all the fuzz and fading it had seen- looked even nastier than it really was. She stomped her foot into the wetness, so irritated she thought she could spit at any moment. "It's a wonder the sickroom ever gets clean at all." There was a brief and blissful silence as Diana leaned the mop against the wall.
"Diana?" Meg's voice said from behind her. Clear as a bell over a graveyard, and almost as welcome. "Is something very wrong?"
"Who does she think she is?" the redhead spat as she kicked the bucket over. The chalk doodles never stood a chance; the toy train that waited patiently for its conductor tipped over with the force of the tiny flood.
Meg looked up, big green eyes gleaming through her glasses. She hugged her notebook close to her chest, as if she thought Diana's rage might make the water rise up to damage it. "Who?" she asked timidly.
Diana looked over at Meg. Sweet, stupid little Margaret. So considerate, so gullible. Diana shook her head and smiled at the little blonde. "Oh, it's nothing, really..."
"But Diana, you looked so dreadful just now," Meg said, coming timidly closer. "You looked just furious."
"It's really nothing, Meg," she reassured, reaching out to stroke Meg's soft blonde curls. She really did think Meg was pretty-- not pretty like Wendy, certainly, and definitely not awful Clara's "classic" beauty, of course-- but her features were gentle and her hair was soft and thick. Meg's eyes brightened as Diana's hand reached her head, and her eyes glimmered with hopeful affection. "I was just thinking... Mr. Hoffman wants Clara to have a new dress, but she doesn't want it-- she's such a humble and practical girl, you know. And I am next oldest, after all, and I thought.. I might finally be rid of this dreadful thing," Diana said, gesturing to the offending sundress.
Meg nodded. "It really doesn't suit you at all," she said, quick to agree with whatever Diana expressed as though it were prophecy.
She nodded. "You've always been the smartest of us, Meg." Meg's heart looked as though it might leap out of her chest. "Could you.. perhaps talk to Clara? It seems so unfair that she should refuse such a nice present from our headmaster when there are others in more need who might accept."
If anyone had thought to ask, Meg would later credit this moment as the inspiration for the Onion Bag, but by the time the Onion Bag made its presence known, no one wanted to ask Meg about where her ideas come from. For the time, she simply nodded, and trotted off with a mission.
***
It was nearly a week later. Two days that week, Clara had stayed out late, and on this night it would be the third.
The door cracked open, and Clara stepped in, tears streaming down her cheeks though she did not sob. Diana looked up, and rather than shuffling into the room, barely able to stay on her feet, she strode in and dumped a pile of cloth on Diana's bunk. Her face, half-illuminated in the hallway light, was red and splotchy, her eyes sunken hollows of darkness. Diana had never seen such rage in Clara's infuriatingly pretty face, and it was alarming.
"Take it, you nasty, selfish wretch," she rasped, voice tight with choked gasps and sobs. "Die choking on it."
As quickly as she'd come, she was gone again, folding into her bunk like a bad hand. Diana sat up to look at the thing that had been so angrily thrust onto her bed, and grinned, all traces of fear vanished.
Beneath her, Meg smiled too.
***
The next morning, Diana came to breakfast in her new dress. The top didn't quite fit; it would be a year or three before her chest could properly fill the plunging neckline, but the skirt, while on a properly-fitted woman would come up above the knee, made up for its impropriety in its poor-fitting length as it hung just above the tops of her boots.
"Oh, it's just lovely, Diana!" Meg cheered. Her smile was almost as bright as Diana's as the redhead twirled and pirouetted around the foyer, pinstripes flowing around her like rose petals of red wine and sweet cream-- she wrote the image down in her notebook.
"Isn't it just?" Diana replied. Wendy might have been the Princess of the Rose, but for that moment, Diana felt like a Queen. The best part, she knew, was that this dress was just perfect for fiery red hair, and Clara, with her endearing tawny blonde locks, wouldn't have looked half as good. Burgundy is a bold color and not meant for the meek, Wendy noted. The pinstripes, Eleanor said in a rare moment of observation, made her look taller, too. Even Mr. Hoffman said she looked much prettier in it than her old sundress, and a nice new daddy would surely love her in it.
She beamed.
Her day could not have gone better, she decided, as cleaning time rolled around. She picked up her mop and bucket and waltzed round the play room, determined to clean so well that she would be first on the roll that evening. Even Meg, hearing this ambition, abandoned her post to help.
Halfway through, Mr. Hoffman stepped through the playroom door. "Margaret," he scolded. "There you are. You ought to be taking care of the library, little girl, you left your goats in there this morning-- goats don't belong in libraries, they'll eat all the books." He looked down his long nose at her, over the top of his little round glasses, and pointed to the door.
Margaret pouted slightly- she so loved being jealous of the mop as Diana danced around-- but there was no use. If the library wasn't cleaned, she could expect no sweets after dinner, and nobody wants that at all. Her footsteps echoed down the hall as she trotted off to find Susan. Hoffman closed the door behind her, and turned to face Diana.
He smiled. It was that smile, that coveted smile that was always followed by compliments and flattery and the occasional treat; that gleam in the old man's eyes, preceeding the grownup privelege of staying up late and having extra sweets and letting the children do the children's work while the grownups talked about grownup things.
"Yes, Mr. Hoffman?" Diana asked, smiling brightly with pride; she curtsied, even, to show what a lady she was.
"Ah, yes, Diana. I thought we could talk a bit," he said, coming closer. His hand closed around her shoulder, long and spidery as the very tips of his fingers slid carelessly under her sailor collar on the other side. "After all, you've been showing so much maturity as of late, and I admit I was very pleased to see that someone around here appreciates my giving nature-- that's a very ladylike attitude you've come into, Diana, I'm very proud." Hoffman's glasses caught the sunset filtering into the room for a moment, obscuring one of his eyes with red-gold light.
Diana smiled warmly, and tossed back her hair from her face. "Well, I am growing up," she said confidently.
"That's very much so," Mr. Hoffman said, smiling a bit wider. "And since you are growing up-- and so fast, too!-- I think it is time to discuss the changes you'll go through as you blossom into a woman. Let's come to my office, shall we?"
***
The door cracked open again that night. The sliver of hallway light fell across Diana's bunk as Meg lay sleeping in the one below. Eleanor might or might not have been asleep; Amanda snored and rumbled and grunted. Susan and Olivia slept like the babies they were; the boys, oblivious in their sword-bearing dreams, snored lightly in the darkness. The sounds of muffled, angry sobs stopped as though they were hitting a wall as soon as the shuffling feet made it into the room; she refused to wake the others. The girl folded into her bunk like a bad hand, and then, like a broken dam, the weeping began anew, buried into an all-too-thin pillow.
On the other side of the room, Clara cried too.
Edited for Word filter: s*CENSORED* is inappropriate?
The grey light of the hallway fell over Diana's face as the doorway cracked open. She scowled as the restful darkness was burnt away, and her eyes opened in a squint; it was another one of those nights. The rest of the girls were already asleep; Wendy was away, sick in bed as usual. Meg's rhythmic breathing in the bunk beneath her was soft and muffled by the stuffed goat she was cuddled up with. Eleanor was probably asleep, but Diana was never sure; Amanda's piggish snoring rumbled in her lumpy barrel chest. The boys, in various states of dress and disarray, half-flopped out of their bunks still clinging to their broom handles. Susan and Olivia were too young to be thought of as really being alive, so asleep or awake didn't matter unless one or both were crying. Diana was the only child still awake, save one.
Clara's feet shuffled into the room.
The first time it had happened, Diana had been asleep, and was woken by Clara's quiet crying as she tried to slip into bed without anyone noticing. The younger girl had assumed she'd been sneaking about the house, filching sweets or some such, and Martha had whipped her soundly for her trouble and sent her back to bed.
Serves her right, Diana had thought, getting caught for something so stupid. She went back to sleep and thought nothing of it. That first time had been months ago.
Now, as Clara walked stiffly to her bunk, Diana watched the shadow of Mr. Hoffman slide like oil across the sliver of hallway lamplight and back toward his office for the third time this week. Clara rarely cried anymore; she hadn't in some time, really, but she always looked like she was about to start at any minute. She staggered across the room, only barely missing toys and drawing paper scattered along the floor, and folded into her own bunk in the corner.
She glared. Why did Clara always get to stay up late? The next day, Mr. Hoffman would call her name first when he called the roll for breakfast. He would tell her what a good girl she was, and how pretty she was, and how grown up she was becoming. He would stroke her pretty hair and tell her to smile and light up her lovely face. He would tell Martha that it really was time that Clara see a proper doctor, now that she was becoming a woman and would soon need to consider the gravity of a woman's body and its developments, and that she really ought to have a new dress made, she was growing right out of her cute, pink frock-- in all directions, it seemed. A young lady should wear something more her age.
But Clara would look away modestly, letting her hair-- which Mr. Hoffman said looked so much more grown-up since she trimmed it a bit-- fall demurely across her face, and say no, she wouldn't need any of those things. And Hoffman would laugh and pat her head, and say what a modest and humble thing she was, what a lovely wife she'd make one day.
And Diana would listen and feel positively disgusted. It was bad enough that Clara, whose beauty almost made her competition for Wendy's throne (it was lucky for everyone, Diana thought, that Wendy was far wiser and far more pure of heart-- not that Clara had any interest in playing with the "children" since Hoffman had taken such a liking to her), was Hoffman's invariable favorite, it just added insult to injury that she would be so revoltingly fake about it. Politely refusing a chance at a new dress; who did she think she was fooling?
Diana went back to sleep, lulled by muffled sobs across the dormitory.
***
That afternoon, when Clara's deplorable dog-and-pony show of humility was over, Hoffman declared it cleaning day, and sent the children off to clean the house. Diana was assigned to the play room. Clara was just cleaning the sick room again. All she ever did was scrub the examining table, Diana thought, scrubbing that same spot over and over. And yet the thing was never clean, even when no one had been sick on it for months at a time, Clara was always scrubbing away at those same spots but they were always there. Lazy little snipe, even with Hoffman right there beside her, she didn't have to clean properly-- any other child would be scolded for leaving such messes, but not Clara. Clara was wonderful, Clara was perfect. Not that it really mattered that she was a lazy housekeeper; Hoffman would take her into the sickroom halfway through to tell her how pretty she was, and Clara wouldn't have to finish her chores at all.
Diana ran the mop across the floor, train tracks dissolving in the cold, dingy water. Her reflection in the slick, wet wood was deplorable- dirty from scrubbing the walls and her sundress- an ugly, sunflower-yellow monstrosity that might as well have been made from some dying canary's feathers for all the fuzz and fading it had seen- looked even nastier than it really was. She stomped her foot into the wetness, so irritated she thought she could spit at any moment. "It's a wonder the sickroom ever gets clean at all." There was a brief and blissful silence as Diana leaned the mop against the wall.
"Diana?" Meg's voice said from behind her. Clear as a bell over a graveyard, and almost as welcome. "Is something very wrong?"
"Who does she think she is?" the redhead spat as she kicked the bucket over. The chalk doodles never stood a chance; the toy train that waited patiently for its conductor tipped over with the force of the tiny flood.
Meg looked up, big green eyes gleaming through her glasses. She hugged her notebook close to her chest, as if she thought Diana's rage might make the water rise up to damage it. "Who?" she asked timidly.
Diana looked over at Meg. Sweet, stupid little Margaret. So considerate, so gullible. Diana shook her head and smiled at the little blonde. "Oh, it's nothing, really..."
"But Diana, you looked so dreadful just now," Meg said, coming timidly closer. "You looked just furious."
"It's really nothing, Meg," she reassured, reaching out to stroke Meg's soft blonde curls. She really did think Meg was pretty-- not pretty like Wendy, certainly, and definitely not awful Clara's "classic" beauty, of course-- but her features were gentle and her hair was soft and thick. Meg's eyes brightened as Diana's hand reached her head, and her eyes glimmered with hopeful affection. "I was just thinking... Mr. Hoffman wants Clara to have a new dress, but she doesn't want it-- she's such a humble and practical girl, you know. And I am next oldest, after all, and I thought.. I might finally be rid of this dreadful thing," Diana said, gesturing to the offending sundress.
Meg nodded. "It really doesn't suit you at all," she said, quick to agree with whatever Diana expressed as though it were prophecy.
She nodded. "You've always been the smartest of us, Meg." Meg's heart looked as though it might leap out of her chest. "Could you.. perhaps talk to Clara? It seems so unfair that she should refuse such a nice present from our headmaster when there are others in more need who might accept."
If anyone had thought to ask, Meg would later credit this moment as the inspiration for the Onion Bag, but by the time the Onion Bag made its presence known, no one wanted to ask Meg about where her ideas come from. For the time, she simply nodded, and trotted off with a mission.
***
It was nearly a week later. Two days that week, Clara had stayed out late, and on this night it would be the third.
The door cracked open, and Clara stepped in, tears streaming down her cheeks though she did not sob. Diana looked up, and rather than shuffling into the room, barely able to stay on her feet, she strode in and dumped a pile of cloth on Diana's bunk. Her face, half-illuminated in the hallway light, was red and splotchy, her eyes sunken hollows of darkness. Diana had never seen such rage in Clara's infuriatingly pretty face, and it was alarming.
"Take it, you nasty, selfish wretch," she rasped, voice tight with choked gasps and sobs. "Die choking on it."
As quickly as she'd come, she was gone again, folding into her bunk like a bad hand. Diana sat up to look at the thing that had been so angrily thrust onto her bed, and grinned, all traces of fear vanished.
Beneath her, Meg smiled too.
***
The next morning, Diana came to breakfast in her new dress. The top didn't quite fit; it would be a year or three before her chest could properly fill the plunging neckline, but the skirt, while on a properly-fitted woman would come up above the knee, made up for its impropriety in its poor-fitting length as it hung just above the tops of her boots.
"Oh, it's just lovely, Diana!" Meg cheered. Her smile was almost as bright as Diana's as the redhead twirled and pirouetted around the foyer, pinstripes flowing around her like rose petals of red wine and sweet cream-- she wrote the image down in her notebook.
"Isn't it just?" Diana replied. Wendy might have been the Princess of the Rose, but for that moment, Diana felt like a Queen. The best part, she knew, was that this dress was just perfect for fiery red hair, and Clara, with her endearing tawny blonde locks, wouldn't have looked half as good. Burgundy is a bold color and not meant for the meek, Wendy noted. The pinstripes, Eleanor said in a rare moment of observation, made her look taller, too. Even Mr. Hoffman said she looked much prettier in it than her old sundress, and a nice new daddy would surely love her in it.
She beamed.
Her day could not have gone better, she decided, as cleaning time rolled around. She picked up her mop and bucket and waltzed round the play room, determined to clean so well that she would be first on the roll that evening. Even Meg, hearing this ambition, abandoned her post to help.
Halfway through, Mr. Hoffman stepped through the playroom door. "Margaret," he scolded. "There you are. You ought to be taking care of the library, little girl, you left your goats in there this morning-- goats don't belong in libraries, they'll eat all the books." He looked down his long nose at her, over the top of his little round glasses, and pointed to the door.
Margaret pouted slightly- she so loved being jealous of the mop as Diana danced around-- but there was no use. If the library wasn't cleaned, she could expect no sweets after dinner, and nobody wants that at all. Her footsteps echoed down the hall as she trotted off to find Susan. Hoffman closed the door behind her, and turned to face Diana.
He smiled. It was that smile, that coveted smile that was always followed by compliments and flattery and the occasional treat; that gleam in the old man's eyes, preceeding the grownup privelege of staying up late and having extra sweets and letting the children do the children's work while the grownups talked about grownup things.
"Yes, Mr. Hoffman?" Diana asked, smiling brightly with pride; she curtsied, even, to show what a lady she was.
"Ah, yes, Diana. I thought we could talk a bit," he said, coming closer. His hand closed around her shoulder, long and spidery as the very tips of his fingers slid carelessly under her sailor collar on the other side. "After all, you've been showing so much maturity as of late, and I admit I was very pleased to see that someone around here appreciates my giving nature-- that's a very ladylike attitude you've come into, Diana, I'm very proud." Hoffman's glasses caught the sunset filtering into the room for a moment, obscuring one of his eyes with red-gold light.
Diana smiled warmly, and tossed back her hair from her face. "Well, I am growing up," she said confidently.
"That's very much so," Mr. Hoffman said, smiling a bit wider. "And since you are growing up-- and so fast, too!-- I think it is time to discuss the changes you'll go through as you blossom into a woman. Let's come to my office, shall we?"
***
The door cracked open again that night. The sliver of hallway light fell across Diana's bunk as Meg lay sleeping in the one below. Eleanor might or might not have been asleep; Amanda snored and rumbled and grunted. Susan and Olivia slept like the babies they were; the boys, oblivious in their sword-bearing dreams, snored lightly in the darkness. The sounds of muffled, angry sobs stopped as though they were hitting a wall as soon as the shuffling feet made it into the room; she refused to wake the others. The girl folded into her bunk like a bad hand, and then, like a broken dam, the weeping began anew, buried into an all-too-thin pillow.
On the other side of the room, Clara cried too.
*cornfuzzled* 
