"Fade to Black 3" by Tansy A. H. Pye

Scene 3.
‘One of Us.’

Mornings on a Friday is when Christie’s school in it’s infinite wisdom scheduled Games for the whole of the Forth year. As if Fridays weren’t bad enough, being the last day of the week and all, they had to find some way to make it worse. In this case by making you choose to risk the inevitable humiliation that were the showers, or go through the rest of the day smelly.

Christie usually chose the latter and more socially unacceptable option. There were only so many times that your towel could be stolen and your clothes thrown into the boys changing rooms opposite, before you became wise to the game and did your best to avoid games entirely, or at the least hide your clothes better. Upon this particular day, Christie was blessed with the perfect excuse. The chosen sport of the day
was swimming and Christie had a running note from the doctor explaining her chronic allergy to Chlorine.
She’d wrangled that one early, soon after she realised that she didn’t want to drown and there were limits to the frequency of your ‘womens problems’ when the P.E teacher was a women. Male teachers could be conned with that one indefinitely, but women soon got wise. The doctor, fortunately was easy to convince.

Dr Berry, Christie’s Family Doctor was about 60 if he was a day, and had been for as long as she could remember. He looked like Heinz Wolf off the great egg race, a T.V show she used to watch when she was little. He thought he was ‘hip’ and ‘cool’ and knew what was going on in the world. And perhaps he did too. He gave Christie the note after all. Even though she told him the real reason she wanted it. He said he thought it was a doctors duty to do what ever was in his power to save his patients from, pain, humiliation or Death by Drowning. And in one rather illegible swoop of his pen he saved Christie from all three, at least in swimming.

She was not alone on the seats that over looked the pool, where those permitted to get out of swimming were requested to sit and quietly read or do their home work. Also on the Benches were three of the group from the year above her, collectively known as ‘The Freaks’.

The Freaks were an odd group of nobodies and weirdoes that had gotten tired of being kicked around and so had created a gang of their own, lead by a tall red haired boy named ‘Dice’. That wasn’t his real name, but hardly anyone knew his real name, even the teachers called him Dice. The freaks had, apparently organised it that way. They said that the adoption of the names people called them gave them power over those names.

Dice had brought them all together as some sort of an experiment after watching the Todd Browning film the Freaks. One of Christie's personal favourites. In it a group of side show freaks, actually played by real freaks in the film. Get their own back on the ‘Normal’ society which had made them what they were by turning them into Freaks. Chanting, ‘One of Us, One of Us’ Since adopting that name. Barely a dinner time would pass without some poor unsuspecting ‘Normal’ Kid dropping their plate, or doing some other thing that would start up the chant from the Freaks table echoing around the otherwise silent hall.

Christie held Dice in something approaching awe. This was as close as she had ever gotten to him, but she was afraid to speak. She reached into her bag and got out the ‘Book of the film’ she had grabbed it on the way out of her room, hoping by reading it, she may get some clues as to her next move.

“The Vampire right.” The voice shocks he out of her reverie, she drops the book. It would have fallen off the balcony and into the water. But Dice catches it and hands it to her. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I just meant, that’s the movie with the vampire in it isn’t it?” He and the other two freaks have moved to sit closer to her.

“Yes, I suppose it is.” There is an awkward silence. “Have you seen it?”

“No, not yet. I was going to see it in the movies, but I didn’t get round to it. Is it any good?”

“Yes, probably the best slasher vampire flick about at the moment.” She blushes realising how weird she must be sounding. “I mean if you like that sort of thing.”

“Not really. I’m more your straight gore fest man my self, and Wolfboy over there, he prefers pure Monster movies, The Creep is too squeamish.” As he mentions their names Wolfboy and The Creep, give little half waves. Christie acknowledges them.

“Hi, I’m Christie.” Dice frowns and actually looks embarrassed.

“I’m sorry. I guess I’m used to our reputations preceding us.” He stands, “My name is Dice, at your service M’lady.” He gives a little flourishing half bow which he ends by kissing her wrist. Christie reclaims her hand and looks quickly down into the pool, to make sure nobody saw. She winces as she sees that Hannah and the henchmen were standing on the opposite side of the pool, ready to dive in. In direct line of sight. They are laughing about something. It might be her, she’ll not know till break time. Dice has followed her eyes.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” He says finally. “I guess that was tactless of me. Do you have any more lessons with them today?”

“No, At least, not all of them together. They’re easier when they’re apart. But break, Lunch and Home times are going to be hell if they saw.” Dice looks at the other two Freaks who nod back at him.

“We’d be happy if you’d spend those times with us. And Wolfboy, Igor and The Professor all walk home your way.” Wolfboy looks at her.

“We saw what they did to you the other afternoon. We were going to come over then, but you didn’t know us and unless you actually are ‘One of Us’ the chant can do more harm than good. I’m sorry.” Christie smiles at him.

“That's okay, I managed.”

“You know, you don’t have to meet up with us at break.” Dice says slowly as if he’s thinking it through as he goes. “I mean if you drop it now, the kiss thing will blow over in a couple of days, a week tops and things will go back to normal. But if you actually join the Freaks. That’s it. Your ‘One of Us’ for good.”

Christie had some time to think about it, because at that point the rest of the Freaks class came back from their cross country run and they had to rejoin them in the changing rooms.

The notes passed around in the Maths lesson confirmed that the kiss had been witnessed. In an attempt to punish the note writers the Maths teacher had Charlotte read the notes out aloud, so the humiliation was spread around the whole class. Now everyone knew. Charlotte and Marcia got detentions but that was small comfort. Their dark glares told Christie exactly who they were intending to blame for their misfortune.

At Break time the bullies caught up with Christie in the playground.

“Well, what have we here? The frog princess?” Charlotte began.

“So The Vampire has found a boyfriend, or should I say a boyfreak.” Marcia. Hannah remained in the background, she rarely entered into such blatant name calling, preferring to mastermind the full attacks. Out of the corner of her eye, Christie could see that the Freaks were gathering just outside of the circle of Bullies. “What’s the matter Vampire? The Freak got your tongue?”

“Where’s your boyfreak now?” Dice was trying to catch Christie’s eye. She saw him the look he gave seemed to say, ‘well, do you want in or what?’ She nodded that she wanted his help.

“Directly behind you.” He said menacingly into the ears of Marcia and Charlotte. They jump and turned around. Dice and the rest of The Freaks are mostly a year older than them and quite a bit taller. Not someone they would normally choose to attack. Too much chance that the worm could turn. Hannah started to back away from her gang, trying to pretend she wasn’t with them, but they were surrounded.

“You ought to be careful who you choose to pick on,” Dice continued, they might turn out to be ‘One of Us’, One of Us, One of Us, One of us...” Pretty soon the chant was taken up by all of The Freaks in the play ground. Christie began to chant with them and was pleased to see the fear begin to blossom in the faces of Hannah and her henchmen, they began to look a little trapped and panicky. Dice stepped back and a gap opened up in The Freaks allowing Hannah and her Cronies to escape. Their flight was accompanied by the laughter of pretty much every one on the field.

The Freaks gathered around and Dice held up his hand for silence, which was eventually given after much shh-ing and elbow nudging.

“Let us welcome our newest member of The Freaks, in true Freaks style... Christie McDonnell, ‘The Vampire’, The Freaks Salute you.” The Freaks began their chant again and one by one each one shook her hand. She was surprised by just how many of them she didn’t recognise. And by how many of them she did; some of them were even in some of her own classes. Catherine and Nicola, from her biology group approached her and after they had given her their Freak names, ‘Cat’ and ‘Heinz’, they told her that next time Dr Peters called for teams, she could go sit with them. It was cool. A whole underground of bullied and victimised people in her own school and she had never really noticed.

Eventually, most of the Freaks melted away into their own groups and cliques, to do whatever it was they normally did at the break time, leaving her with Dice and The Freaks Inner Circle. She was sort of in a daze. It had all happened so fast. She followed Dice and the others to the Senior Lounge, a veritable forbidden zone to her until now, they went and sat around the Freaks usual table in the corner.

The Inner Circle of the Freaks comprised of Five kids, including Dice. As she sat with them over the break time and then at lunch Christie learned all their real names and some of their histories, why they had joined the Freaks;

Wolfboy’s real name was Jason, he had been cursed with an early puberty, leaving him with a deep bass voice, one of the hairiest bodies known to man and a voracious beard that he had to shave at lunch time or have five o’clock shadow before the afternoon was out. Showers had never been much fun for him. Actually the bullies had usually called him Dogboy, but the Freaks had thought Wolf sounded better and once the Freaks had named you, the name usually stuck.

The Professor and Igor were an inseparable pair of girls. Sarah, ‘The Professor’, was short and blonde haired with a really thick pair of glasses and a really high I.Q. She was a straight ‘A’ student. ‘Igor’ was at least as intelligent as The Professor, but because of her enormous size and rather gawky appearance, a bowl hair cut and clothes that seemed at lest two sizes too small and had at some point had frills added, it was usually assumed that she was stupid. Her real name was Jane and Christie liked her immediately.

The Creep’s real name was Neil and his nickname suited him well. He was not so much a member of the inner circle as he was actually just too afraid to leave their direct company lest his bullies catch up to him. As Dice later explained, most of the Creep’s bullies were only in his head. The Freaks have of necessity an open door policy, but there were sometimes people who annoyed even them. The Creep was one of these. He would do anything for you, or indeed for anyone else who took the time to ask. Never tell any secrets in front of the Creep, he’d sell you out to the first buyer. But the Freaks would turn no-one away and the Creep was with them to stay.

At the end of the day Dice offered to walk Christie home. The Professor, Wolfboy and Igor took the hint and hung around the gates to walk some distance behind them.

“Why Dice?” She asked him as they walked. He reached in to his pocket and brought out a number of brightly coloured dice of all shapes and sizes.

“I used to be a role-player. I played these games in which a bunch of us would pretend to be all different types of people and creatures and things and go on adventures, well sometimes we just sit about and do more boring things like plan the castle decorations or have a character’s birthday party. Any way it all sort of involves dice. You roll to see how well you do something, like if the character was going to hit someone with his sword I’d roll for his attack and weapon to see if he could do it. It sounds pretty weird I know, but it’s not. Not when you’re there anyway. Not if you have an imagination. Anyway, when things got bad in school - When they started to bully me I mean, I sort of turned myself into a role-playing character. Rolled up the Stats and every thing. I gave myself a score in courage and humiliation and when the jibes got bad, I’d roll the dice to see if I’d be upset. Eventually it all became sort of a game. The bullies thought I was putting some kind of spell on them with the dice or something, they began to get scared of me, they started calling me ‘Dice’. That's when I got the idea for The Freaks. I wasn’t the only kid being picked on. It struck me that we all had one thing in common; they were afraid of us. I remembered something I read in one of my role playing games once; ‘Monsters we are, lest monsters we become.’ So I gathered the Freaks together and Monsters we became. That's it really; the genesis of the Freaks. We got the name from...”

“The Todd Browning film.” Christie cut in.

“You know it?” Dice seemed genuinely surprised.

“Backwards.. I have it on tape. I must have seen it about a hundred times. It’s one of my favourite movies.”

“Mine too. Oh here’s your road. Want me to walk you to your door?”

“Yeah, I’d like that.” Dice grinned and held out his hand as they turned into her road. She took it and the two of them walked hand in hand down the street. Christie couldn’t be sure but she thought that this might be love.

They reached her door. The living room light was on. But it always was. To deter the burglars.

“Would you like to come in? For Coffee, or Tea or something?”

“Yeah, that would be great.” The two of them entered the house, still hand in hand and Christie quickly shut off the alarm and led on into the kitchen. Their hands had to eventually part so that she could fill the kettle. The release of physical contact seemed to aid conversation. They began to talk again.

“Used to be?”began Christie.

“What?”

You said you used to be a role player. What happened?”

“Oh that. It’s a bit of a thing really. The role play group I ran decided I’d got to weird for them. They elected a new ref and I was asked to leave. They thought I was getting to in to it and needed to take a reality check.”

“And did you? Take a reality check I mean.”

“Not really. I ‘m not to keen on reality I prefer my own world, it’s easier to control and the bad guys are easier to kill, if you know what I mean.

“Yes I think I do.”

Christie can’t remember quite what it was exactly they talked about after that something about role-playing and movies, but at some point they arranged for him to come over the following night. Time passed. Coffee was drunk and eventually her Mum cam home.

When her Mum walked in the two of them were still in the kitchen sitting on opposite sides of the table with absolutely no physical contact whatsoever, but they still jumped like startled rabbits. Dice jumped to his feet and looked as if he were ready to make a break for the door. They must have looked like they were up to something funny. Christie couldn’t help but blush to her roots and stammered.

“Mum this is.. Um...” With a sudden rush of panic Christie realised that she didn’t know his real name. She looked at Dice, who looked for a moment as if he couldn’t remember either. Then almost visibly Christie saw him ‘get in character’, he pulled himself together, composed himself, stood up straighter and said clearly.

“Mrs McDonnell I presume? Charmed. My name is Daniel Shaw, or Danny. My friends call me Dice.” Christie's Mum was smiling, she seemed close to laughing.

“Pleased to meet you Daniel Shaw. Is this a private coffee and chat, or can any one join in?”

“Mum!” Christie gave her a resigned and deeply embarrassed look.

“Oh okay then, I’ll just pour myself a coffee and take myself into the living room. Will Mr Shaw be joining us for dinner?” Christie looked at Dice who gave her an apologetic look.

“Truly I would love to. But alas having seen my lady safely to her chateaux, I must away to my own home where my parents will no doubt be beginning to wonder what manner of trouble I am in. Adieu Christie. Until Tomorrow.” He stepped past Christie’s Mum, into the dining room. Christie stood up and pushed past her Mum to intercept him.

“I’ll walk you to the door.”

“Why thank you, else I might get most hideously lost.” They walked through the dining room together. At the front door. Christie checked on her Mum who was busy pretending to be busy in the Kitchen then leaned forward and kissed Danny lightly on the cheek.

“Till tomorrow.” She said quietly and closed the door, not quite, but almost, in his face. She stood at the door for a few moments listening to his steps crunching down the driveway then turned to face her Mum who was smirking in the door way to the Dining room. Outside, not too far away Christie heard what sounded to be a Whoop of joy. She blushed again as her Mum turned towards the door and raised her eyebrows.

“Sounds like you just made some one very happy. Can I assume we’ll be seeing a little more of that young man in the Future?” It didn’t seem possible to get even an even deeper shade of red on a human face but somehow Christie managed it.

“Maybe...” She said enigmatically. “I’ll be in my room.” She rushed up the stairs. She didn’t watch a film that night. She just lay on her back and watched the glow in the dark stars on her ceiling. When her Mum called her down for dinner, she ate her dinner in the Living room in silence, her mum still grinning, then she went back up the stairs to watch the plastic stars some more.