I am Jane

I Am Jane.
Chapter One: Jane was happy once.

Jane was four years old. She was in the park with Tracy and Janet, they where Janes mommies. Jimmy Tristan (a boy from nursery) had told Jane that little boys and little girls only had one mommy each. He had said that Jane was supposed to have one mommy and one daddy, and that Tracy and Janet had probably stolen Jane from her real mommy and daddy when she was little. In response to this, Jane had told Jimmy Tristan that he was a stupid Idiot and then she had thrown her bucket at his head. Jane had gotten into trouble for that, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care if she was supposed to have a daddy, Janet and Tracy were her mommies, and if Jimmy Tristan didn’t like that, then he was a “stupid Idiot” and she hoped someone was throwing a bucket at his head right now.
Jane looked up at Tracy, who was sitting next to her on an outstretched blanket on the ground; Tracy was already looking down at her, smiling.
Then Jane turned her gaze towards Janet, and Tracys eyes followed. “What is she doing”? Jane asked, turning her head back around to address Tracy. “she’s reading the news” she replied”, looking back down at Jane, still smiling. “Is the news bad?” Jane asked looking back towards Janet. Janet was sitting on the blanket too, about an arms length in front of Jane. She was holding a newspaper in front of her head, so that Jane couldn’t see her face, but she kept shifting her weight, as if she were trying to shake something heavy off her back, and occasionally she would stop reading to let out a heavy sigh and say some of the “bad words” that Jane’s mommies had said where only to be used when one really meant them. They had said that words were the most powerful thing in the world, but if one didn’t use them properly, they became meaningless, and so did the person using them. Jane didn’t think Janet was meaningless, so she thought Janet probably meant “the bad words”, and who ever wrote “the News” was meaningless.
Tracy chuckled in response to Janes question “sometimes the news is bad” she replied.
At this Janet lowered her news paper to peer over the edge of it at Tracy with her eyebrows raised inquisitively, “Sometimes?” “Yes, sometimes”, Tracy replied meeting the gaze with a stern look that seldom appeared on her face.
“Do mean in the way that war sometimes only makes a problem worse, or is it more like the way politicians sometimes think they are entitled to tell other people how they should live, or what they should think?”
“What I mean”, said Tracy, the look on her face turning from stern to angry, “is sometimes a child should not be taught the world is against her. Sometimes it’s better to show her what is good about the world, so she doesn’t become a cynic before she is old enough to know what a cynic is”.
Jane no longer understood what they were talking about, but she understood that they were talking about her, and she understood that they were arguing. Jane didn’t like when grownups talked about her as if she weren’t there. She looked down at the newspaper, which now lay discarded on the blanket in front of her with the page that Janet had been reading facing up. There was a picture of man on the page. The man was standing on a stage in front of a podium covered in lots of microphones that were lots of different colors. Jane thought the man looked scary. He was very big looking, both tall and fat, and he was dressed in a black suit with a white shirt and a red tie. His right arm was raised above his head and his face and eyes looked as if he were very angry with somebody. Jane thought he looked rather like the way Mrs. Hammersmith (Jane’s nursery teacher) had looked when Jane had thrown a bucket at Jimmy Tristan.
She looked back up at her mommies, who were still arguing and decided to interrupt.
“Is he the govment?” she asked, pointing at the picture of the angry, big man looking up at them all with his arm raised.
They stopped arguing, looking a bit confused, as if they had forgotten Jane was there.
“Is he the gov-ern-ment?” Tracy repeated Jane’s question back to her, saying the last word very slowly. Jane knew this meant she had said something wrong, but she couldn’t hear the difference.
“Is he?” She repeated her question, leaving the last word out so she would get an answer in return, instead of a lesson.
“Is he the government?” Tracy repeated the question again, but this time it seemed like she was repeating it to herself. “More, or less” she replied with a smile. This made Janet laugh. “Who’s a cynic now?” she asked.
Jane didn’t understand what they had said at all, but she understood that they were arguing a minute ago, and now they were laughing. “Laughing is better than arguing” she thought to herself. “Even If I don’t understand what they are saying, I still understand that”.

Later that evening, Jane was sitting on the floor of her bedroom playing with her Polly. Polly was the doll that Janet had made for Jane when she was a baby. Polly was about the length of Jane’s forearm, from elbow to fingertips, She had a yellow sundress with matching hat and handbag. Her hair was dark brown (the same color as Jane’s) and she was, in Jane’s opinion, the very best doll in the world. Janet had told Jane that she had knitted Polly for her as soon as she had found out that Jane would be coming to live with them. She had told Jane that in order to make Polly, she needed to use all of her love. She had told Jane that no matter what happened, no matter how far away from each other they were, Jane would never be alone, as long as Jane had her Polly with her, she would have all of Janet’s love with her as well.
Jane looked up. She could hear her mommies’ voices coming from the living room, which was next to Jane’s room. It sounded like they were arguing again. She also heard a third voice; it was a man’s voice that Jane didn’t recognize. She decided to go and find out what was happening. She picked up Polly, tucked her under her arm and walked carefully and quietly through her bedroom doorway and into the corridor which led to the living room.
Upon arrival in the living room, she saw her mommies sitting on the sofa with their arms around each other looking scared. This made Jane very scared, because she couldn’t remember Janet ever looking scared before. In fact, until now, Jane had thought that Janet wasn’t scared of anything.
The man’s voice that Jane had heard was coming from the television. Jane looked at the screen. It was the angry big man Jane had seen in the news paper earlier that day. He was on a stage with lots of microphones in front of him this time too. There were lots of people there watching him, more people than Jane could count, and he was still wearing the black suit, white shirt and red tie he had been wearing last time. Jane thought that it must be some sort of uniform that he had to wear for his job. Jane’s mommy Tracy wore a uniform for her job. She was a “please officer”, or something that sounded like that. It was another one of those words Jane’s mommies would repeat back to her slowly whenever she said it. Jane asked what the man was saying, but her mommy Tracy just told her that Jane had had to be quiet right now, because her mommies were trying to listen. Jane tried to listen as well. She didn’t understand what the man was saying at all. He kept saying something that sounded like “home sekshality”. Jane didn’t know what “home sekshality” was, but it sounded like, whatever it was, the angry, big man didn’t think it was very good.
Jane wondered if her mommies were scared of “home sekshality” like the angry, big man, but thought it far more likely that they were scared of him. Jane certainly was afraid of him. And if he was afraid of “home sekshality”, then Jane would probably be afraid of that too, if only she had known what it was. Jane sat down on the floor next to the sofa and held Polly on her lap in front of her so Polly could see the man too, and continued to listen in silence.
Most of what the man said was very difficult to understand, but Jane tried her best to listen and make sense of it. She understood that the angry, big man thought that “home sekshality” was dangerous. He also thought that “home sekshells” and something he called “imgrants” were destroying the country. She didn’t know what “imgrants” were either, or why the angry, big man thought they were destroying the country. As far as she could tell the country wasn’t destroyed at all. She thought perhaps the angry, big man lived in a different country than she did. Another thing he kept saying was something that Jane did understand. He kept saying “We deserve better”. He would repeat it over and over again, and when he said it, the people who were there watching him said it with him. “We deserve better! We deserve better! We deserve!
Jane knew what this meant, but why they were all repeating it over and over again was a mystery to her. She thought it was probably something to do with the “imgrants” and that whoever the “imgrants” were, the angry, big man and his followers probably didn’t think that they deserved better too.
Jane kept watching silently clutching Polly tightly in front of her until the man had finished speaking. Her mommy Janet turned off the television and placed the remote control gently on the coffee table. Nobody said anything. Jane’s mommy Tracy was crying. She was sitting curled up next to Janet with her head resting on Janet’s shoulder so she could hide her face in Janet’s long blond hear. Jane looked at Janet’s face. She didn’t look scared anymore. She looked angry. She turned her face to look back at Jane and said “don’t worry Jane, I promise that everything is going to be alright”. Tracy lifted her head from Janet’s shoulder and got up off the sofa. She walked over to Jane, picked her up and held Jane tightly against her chest, with Jane’s head resting just beneath her chin. She spoke to Jane gently, ”Don’t worry Jane, I promise that everything is going to be alright”. Jane decided that she didn’t like it when grownups started repeating things.
Jane was awoken later that night with a start. The last thing she remembered was her mommies putting her to bed after the angry, big man was finished talking on television. They had tucked her in, with Polly next to her as they usually did. Tracy had sung her the song about the butterfly, also as usual, and they had both kept telling her that everything would be alright, not as usual. When they had said this, Jane had not believed them, also not as usual. Jane sat up in her bed straining her eyes against the dark to look around the room for source of her start. There was somebody standing in her bedroom doorway. It was a tall, mysterious person dressed all in black, with a big black helmet on so Jane couldn’t see the person’s face. The mysterious person had a golden badge hanging on a chain around their neck. Jane recognized it, this person was a please officer.
“What do you want?” Jane asked. “Why are you here?” the mysterious person didn’t reply. Jane heard her mommies voices coming from somewhere inside the house. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they were screaming and they sounded like someone, or something was hurting them. There were other voices as well. Voices Jane didn’t recognize. They were shouting angrily and sounded like they were being mean to Jane’s mommies. Jane jumped out of her bed and tried to run and help them, but the mysterious person caught her arm and wouldn’t let her go. “Let me go!” She shouted. Let me go! Let me go!
The mysterious person spoke in a deep manly voice “calm down, everything is going to be alright” he said, but Jane didn’t believe him.

Chapter two: Jane’s arrival at the castle.

Jane was twelve years old. She was on a bus, surrounded by other little girls that Jane assumed where the same age as she was. The man driving the bus was separated from the children by a great iron cage, with a great big silver pad lock on it. Jane thought this was a bit funny, not that she enjoyed the experience, just the idea that a fully grown man, needed a great big cage to protect him from twenty-two, ten year old schoolgirls. Jane knew there were twenty-two girls, because she had counted them. She had been on the bus for hours. It was impossible to tell exactly how long, because there was no clock on the bus, and all the girls had been forced to hand over their possessions before they had left London, so nobody had a watch either.
Jane knew that there were twenty two girls. She also knew that there were five thick bars on each window, with ten windows, making fifty bars in total. There were eight rows of benches on the bus; each row had four seats, with two seats on either side of an isle separating them down the middle. This made a total of thirty two seats, with twenty two girls in them, leaving ten empty seats. Jane was bored.
Nobody on the bus spoke. At the beginning of the trip two of the girls sitting at the very back of the bus (three rows behind Jane) had been speaking to each other, but the bus driver had simply pushed a button to the right of the dash board and a horrible, high pitched squeaking sound had issued from the loudspeakers mounted in the top two corners at the front of the bus. He had let the squeaking continue till everybody had fallen silent. After that, nobody spoke on the bus.
Jane thought it rather peculiar that the bus driver was more annoyed by the sound of friendly banter, than he was by that horrible squeaking. “He has probably heard the squeaking so often that he has grown a custom to it”, she thought, “but I shouldn’t like to grow a custom to something so horrible”. This made Jane feel a little bit sorry for the bus driver. She thought that, whoever he was, his life was probably just as difficult and boring as Jane’s was. This made Jane feel a little bit sorry for herself. It made her think about Tracy and Janet, and how she hadn’t seen either of them since the black hats stormed into their house in the middle of the night and arrested them for the crimes of “homosexuality” and, for some reason; “treason”. After that Jane had been taken to live at The Baylsey Institute for Girls, a small boarding school just outside of London. It was a school for little girls like Jane. Little girls whose mothers and fathers were considered to “pose a threat to society”, and were as such deemed “unfit to raise children”.
Jane couldn’t remember much about Tracy and Janet. She remembered that Janet had been tall and strong, with long blond hair almost all the way down to her waist. And she remembered that when Janet spoke, everybody listened, and everybody believed her. She remembered that Tracy had been soft and kind and that she had been a police officer one day, then a criminal the next. Jane could no longer picture either of their faces, but she could remember that they were both beautiful. Even though this was all Jane could remember, she felt it was enough to say with complete confidence, that Janet and Tracy had been far better at raising children then any of the people to whom Jane’s care had been entrusted since.

The word cursor:

Blink, blink, blink and blink again.
I think it may exist to mock,
The mouth on hungry page
But every word I serves absurd,
It blinks as if reminding me,
In-sighting me,
to find a cursed word.
Erm? Sock.

Miss Josephine (the headmistress at Baylsey) was certainly one of the worst guardians and one of the worst human beings Jane had ever come across. Jane thought she very well may be one of the worst human beings in the entire empire. Miss Josephine, or Marissa, as her friends would have called her (had she had any friends, something Jane imagined to be rather unlikely) was a short, fat, wrinkly old bat, with grey hair, a grey face and a grey personality. Her eyes were grey, her shoes were grey, her clothes had probably been black once, but they had turned grey with time, as if they were attempting to match their withered, grey wearer. At Baysley, Marissa Josephine was; not only the headmistress, but the nurse, the counselor and the teacher of every subject. She was indeed a woman of many jobs and many responsibilities, every one of which she performed with an equal amount of ignorance and contempt. Her favorite thing to say was;” Little girls who don’t listen, don’t learn. And little girls who don’t learn, won’t know how to serve the empire”. Once, when Jane was around seven, she had told Miss Josephine that she didn’t need to listen, because she didn’t want to serve the empire. This had resulted in a week with nothing to eat, except for occasional bread crusts, or odd scraps of food that other girls had managed sneak upstairs from the school cafeteria after dinner, but even for the girls who did what they were told, food was rationed and left over’s were few and far between.
Jane let out an audible sigh, causing some of the other girls on the bus to turn and look at her nervously. She forced her thoughts away from Baysley, away from grey faced Miss Josephine and her grey faced existence and decided instead to turn her mind’s eye towards the future.
She was on her way to St. Herberts Institute for miserable children who are abused and neglected, or as it was affectionately known to all those who knew and feared it; The Castle. The castle had grown to become the most infamous institution in the empire. The stories that emanated there from, ranged from dubbing it the finest reformation school in the country. A place where the students went in as social miscreants, who were an ugly stain the on the empires otherwise proud and noble legacy. And came out productive members of the greatest society in the world, to a hell on earth. A place where unwanted children went in, and mindless robots came out to provide a handy workforce for the empire and its many violent, greedy endeavors.
Jane wasn’t really sure who, or how much of it to believe, but as far as she was concerned it didn’t really matter. She wasn’t planning on hanging around for long enough to discover the truth of it anyway. 
The bus came to a stop and all the girls stirred. They stood at a small buss station at the bottom of a very steep hill. At the top of the hill she saw it; the Castle. From were jane was sitting it look like nothing more than a great big wall, with a spiral of barbed wire curling itself around the top. Juxtaposed to the bus that jane was on, stood another bus that looked just like theirs, except this bus was full of little boys. None of the little boys stole so much as a glance at the girls. Jane thought they must have a squeaky noise on that bus too. Either that, or this was the oddest collection of boys in the history of the empire. The driver on Janes bus stood and spoke to the girls, ” I’ll be right back, nobody do anything, or you’ll regret it”. Jane believed him. He opened the door and crossed the distance separating the two busses to approach the other driver, who was smoking a cigarette outside the open doors of his bus looking glum. Jane heard the muffled sound of their gloomy dulcet tones as they spoke, but could make out none of the words clearly.
After a time, the drivers separated and re-entered their respective busses. ”Alright , I wan’t everyone to calmly and quietly stand up, exit the bus and form a straight line along it on the outside” The bus driver said as he entered. He pulled out a key attached to a chain on his belt from his right hand trouser pocket and undid the lock on the big cage with a great “clunk”. The girls did what he said, as he said it.
As they exited the door at the front of the bus, Jane noticed a box under the dash, next to the drivers seat. It was a box full of the possessions that had been confiscated at the beginning of the journey, and sticking out of the top of it, her brown curls a mess beneath her yellow sun hat, was Polly. “Mine” thought Jane.

                                  Chapter three: A Warm welcome

Standing in the massive entrance hall of the Castle was as depressing an experience as Jane had expected it would be. The children were lined up in two files, boys in one line, girls in the other, facing each other, (or, they would have been facing each other, had they not all been starring at their own feet in the hopes of avoiding trouble). Between the ranks stood two people: A woman, who looked like she was in her fifties, dressed all in black, except for a bright purple and gold broach that was pinned to her left lapel. Her face was pale, thin and stern. Jane thought the expression she wore looked as if she were witnessing some sort of awful crime, no matter what  her black, beady eyes fell upon. The other person was a boy. He looked about sixteen, or seventeen. He was tall, and clad in what jane presumed must be the school uniform, with black shoes, black trousers and a black V neck jumper, with the school crest stitched above his heart, and a white shirt, with a green tie beneath it. His Hair was short, black and curly and his eyes were big, bright and blue. Jane thought he looked quite beautiful. “He must be the head boy” she thought.
The woman spoke: “Today can end up being the best, or the worst day of your entire life”, she said, scanning the rows of children as if daring them to test her patience.“My name is miss Agatha Frink and I am the headmistress here at St. Herberts, and Headmistress is how you will address me. Is that understood”? The pretty boy next to her spoke loudly and clearly; “Yes headmistress“. Some of the other children echoed him timidly.
“I said, is that understood?” she repeated, adding a bit more force, to make the question sound more like a threat. This time all the children answered in unison, “Yes head Mistress” they said, making the sound bounce and reverberate loudly off the naked stone walls of the Castle entrance hall. Agatha Frink continued, “ My job is to turn you from whatever it is you may currently be, into a productive member of this great empire of ours”. She paused for effect, as her calculating gaze fell upon Jane. Jane met it head on, unafraid. They stood there for a few moments, unblinking, their eyes locked in a battle of will. Agatha Frinks face was stern and menacing. Jane could tell that she was trying to make herself look as intimidating as possible, but Jane was hard to scare. She kept her face smooth, void of emotion and imagined she was looking straight through the woman. Past her black dress and her pale stern face. Jane forced her gaze past the black beady eyes and made it burrow into the headmistresses mind, into her very soul. The headmistresses eyes started welling up with tears, her cheeks reddening slightly, so she turned her gaze away looking flustered, deciding to continue her speech instead. “I’ll pay for that later” thought Jane, but still considered it to be worth it. She allowed herself to flash a small victory grin at a small fat, but rather cute looking boy who was staring at her in amazement from half way across the hall. He grinned back at her widely, clearly impressed, before turning his eyes back to his shoes, flushing slightly. Headmistress Agatha Frink was still talking, saying something about honor and responsibility, but Jane had given up on listening, deciding that staring blankly at the tiny groves and patterns in the stone floor was a much more productive use of her focus. Jane saw a pattern in everything, when she had informed miss Josephine of this, she had been told she was a silly, deluded little girl, who was only pretending to see things that weren’t there, because she wanted attention, and because she wanted to pretend that she was special when compared with everyone else. Jane didn’t think she was more “special” than anybody, but she knew what she saw, and she wasn’t going to be convinced otherwise by anybody. Especially not by somebody who couldn’t even see past her own nose for long enough to notice that she was sixty-five, single, and so desperate for love and compassion, that she had dedicated her life to attempting to deprive others of the same. Jane smiled again, feeling a small serge of pity for her past headmistress, and turned her attention back to the brand new one, standing before her, still prattling on pompously. “ After your first week at St. Herberts, you will be divided into one of to classes. The first is known as the achievers class. This class is for those of you who study hard, follow my rules and wish to become good citizens. If you graduate from St. Herberts as a part of this class, you will have a future, if you don’t” She paused again for dramatic effect, glancing briefly at Jane distastefully, “You won’t” she concluded. “The other class” she continued ,“is known as the Lower class. This class is for those of you who think yourself above hard work, above serving our glorious empire and its noble ambition. To those of you who fit this description, allow me to offer you this warning. Defying me, is tantamount  to defying the high chancellor himself, and shall be treated as such. I love the empire more than anything and everything in the world, so anyone who threatens to taint its glory with laziness, or with disloyalty, will be crushed and discarded, like the insignificant little insect they are”. As she said this she held a pale boney hand out in front of her, closing it into a fist to illustrate her point. Absentmindedly, stupidly, Jane let out a loud, arrogant snort that echoed and rang in the silence it had created. Every body was starring at her in utter astonishment. Well, every body except for Agatha Frink. Her expression was less astonished, and more infuriated. Her pale skin was no longer pale, but bright purple and her beady black eyes looked as if they were trying to leap from their sockets and attack Jane where she stood. “Is there something that you find amusing miss?” She left a silence, expecting Jane to fill it with her name, but jane didn’t comply. “ Well, what is your name you stupid little girl”? “Jane headmistress” Jane said looking up at her calmly. “well, Jane” She said, emphasizing the name, as if it tasted foul on her tongue. “What about my speech is it you find so amusing?” Jane knew she had two options in this situation, she could bend the knee, or stir the pot. “In for a penny, in for a pound” she thought, and spoke up confidently. “ Your speech?” Jane asked in a tone of mock confusion. “ Nothing headmistress, nothing amusing there. I’m afraid I allowed my mind to wonder briefly, I was actually laughing at something far more interesting than you”. There was a moment of silence, in which Agatha Frink looked as if she had been slapped silly with a smelly salmon, before a thunderous laughter erupted from everybody present. Everybody that is, except for Agatha Frink, who whirled around screaming at the top of her lungs “Shut up! All of you, be quiet this instant!” As she stood there, trying franticly to subdue the laughing children, Jane saw the woman for what she really was: A sad, spoiled little girl, screaming angrily at the world, for not being what she thought it ought be. The tall, curly haired pretty boy chimed in, “Be quiet everybody! Settle down!” His voice was high pitched and arrogant, and when he spoke, his expression turned snobbish and ugly. Jane thought he looked rather like a rich old lady, disguised as a young servant boy. After a bit of time, and a lot of shouting, they successfully silenced the crowd. The Headmistress spoke first to her snobby side kick. “Peter” He looked up expecting direction. “ I trust you can finish up for me here“. “Yes headmistress” said Peter, straightening his back and shoulders as he spoke, like a soldier standing to attention. Agatha Frink turned her attention back to jane. “Follow me Jane”, she spat angrily, then she spun on her heal and marched off towards a wide, grey, stone stair case at the far side of the hall, opposite the big wooden double doors the children had entered through earlier.
Jane had been sitting alone in the headmistresses office for about five minutes or so. The office was located in a tall tower at the far western corner of the castle. It had been rather a long walk from the entrance hall, but Jane didn’t mind that. It had given her the opportunity to see a bit more of the place straight away. Why it was dubbed; the Castle, was apparent, because a castle was exactly what it was. A massive, old, stone castle fully equipped with long, dark, poorly lit corridors, tall towers with spiral staircases and great big stained glass windows, depicting brave knights, performing brave deeds for king and country. Jane thought there would probably be dungeons and secret passage ways and all sorts of hidden treasures for her to unveil. The office jane was sitting in was a large room with four thick stone pillars that led up to a high arched ceiling. She was on a low chair, in front of a big oak desk. Everything on the desk was arranged symmetrically. Behind the desk was a large portrait of a large, angry looking man. Jane knew who this man was. In fact everybody knew who this man was. His portrait hung in every living room, in every home across the empire. This man was the high Chancellor Albert Prince. This was the man who held  a special place in Janes heart. The man she hated above all others, above all those who had beaten her in his name, for as the common saying said: The hand of the flock, the will of the shepherd.
Another thing Jane noticed in the room was a box. The same box she had seen while exiting the bus earlier, and still peering above the edge if it, was polly. “Mine” Jane thought. “Polly is mine, and I shall have her back, even if it means the end of me”.
Jane straightened and focused as the office door swung open and the headmistress strode through it. “ Miss Able”, she said addressing jane, wearing what Jane thought to be her “this is a very serious situation” face. “Yes headmistress” Jane replied. Headmistress Frink closed the door behind her, and sat herself behind the desk. Jane noticed ( and thought it unlikely to be unintended) that the headmistresses seat was at least fifteen centimeters higher than Janes. “Tell me Jane, what exactly is it you hope to achieve with your life?” “Beauty” Said Jane without thinking, and without understanding why she had said, what she had said. Headmistress Frink looked taken aback for an instant, but apparently decided she was happy with the response, “yes Jane, beauty, very good. You see, there is nothing more beautiful than the selfless act of dedicating ones self entirely to the high chancellor, and to the well being of his magnificent empire”. Jane wasn’t sure what she had meant by her own remark, but she was sure it was pretty far removed from whatever the headmistress had perceived it to mean. Still, she kept still her tongue, and allowed the woman to indulge her own delusion. “All is not lost for you Jane. You still have the opportunity to turn your life around, to make it worthwhile”. Jane had to fight back another loud snort. The Idea that this person thought herself “worthwhile” was the joke of a lifetime in Janes eyes, but she knew better than to show what she felt. Jane knew with first hand experience how the empire dealt with people who felt the way jane felt about mostly everything. “
I can help you Jane”, she said, “do you wan’t me to help you Jane?” Her face had changed from all business, to an eery, fake, mask of compassion. Jane didn’t answer the question. The womans expression was so at odds with her face that jane kept the silence just to see how long she could keep it there. It didn’t take very long. “Fine!” she shouted, letting her face turn angry again. Jane noticed that she looked somehow, more relaxed when she was angry. The headmistress stood abruptly from her chair, marched round the desk, grabbed Jane by the forearm and yanked her to her feet. “ If you don’t want me as a friend, then you shall have me as an enemy” she spat. She dragged jane across the room to the window and let go of her arm to open it. The window opened to let a cool August breeze enter the room. “ that’s really lovely” thought Jane, “I bet i’d really enjoy that, if I wasn’t busy wondering just what the fuck is about to happen to me”. Headmistress Frink stood looking at Jane expectantly. “Well,” she said, as if it were blatantly obvious what she wanted from her. “well, what?” answered Jane. “Well, climb up” she offered in return, looking from Jane to the windowsill. As far as Jane could tell she had no choice, so she complied, slowly. She hoisted herself up onto the window sill, feeling genuinely terrified for the first time all day. “Is she about to order me to hurl myself from her office window?” Jane thought to herself, looking down at the woman who had suddenly become a lot more intimidating than the screaming, petulant child Jane had witnessed in the entrance hall. “On the outside” said Frink with an oversold tone of exasperation in her voice. Jane took deep breath, trying to calm her acrobatic pulse. “ Calm” she told herself, “calm. If you faint now your fucked Jane. Calm jane, calm!” . Gently, Jane stepped out on the ledge in front of her. It was about the width of Janes own feet, and as soon as jane had stepped onto it, the headmistress shut the window behind her. “what do I do now?” thought Jane, fighting the urge to panic. “What can I do now?”. She thought she must be at least 50 meters of the ground, but she didn’t care to look down for long enough to make a more informed guess. She was utterly helpless, her back pinned against window, not even able to turn around and see if the person responsible for her current situation was still in the room behind her, or if she was planning on letting Jane back inside any time soon.
Standing there, trying desperately not to move, feeling more alone, more abandoned than ever before, Jane did something she couldn’t remember doing in years; she cried.



                              Chapter 4:Contact.

Jane awoke the next morning to the obnoxious sound of a loud bell mounted above the door of the room she shared with three other girls she had never spoken to, and knew nothing about. She felt lost and broken. Her legs aced from the effort of keeping still on the window ledge for the hour, or so it took for Headmistress Frink to decide that she had learned her lesson and let her back inside. Jane stirred in her bed in an attempt to shake the exhaustion from her body and noticed a folded piece of paper fall to the floor. She looked at it for a while, trying to remember something that would explain its presence, but concluded that no such memory existed. She picked it up, unfolded it and began to read:

Here is the thing.
There is no thing.
Or, the thing is, that nobody knows what the thing is.
When I think on this, my senses protest.
My senses cannot make sense of this.
But my senses are limited.
The thing is not.
The thing is unlimited.
I think I am the thing, sometimes.
Other times I’m just this.
(Whatever this is.)
People tell me I should be better at this.
I know what they mean.
When I look around; it seems that mostly everybody is better at this than I am.
They mostly seem convinced that they belong here, doing this.
(Whatever this Is.)
Maybe doing this is the thing.
Maybe this is what “the thing” is.
Maybe “it” is “this”.
Maybe this is it.
Maybe it doesn’t matter.
It probably doesn’t matter.

Expect us.

Jane sat in silence for a few seconds, trying to form an insightful thought as to what she had just read, and why someone had placed it on her bed in the dead of night, but all she was able to produce was; “what the fuck?”.  She couldn’t even begin to make something useful with the confusing information she had. Whatever “this” was, but she knew that somebody was sending her a very deliberate message. This note was nothing like anything Jane had ever read. She remembered her mothers would talk about the importance of reading. In fact, most of the memories she had of Janet, involved Jane watching her quietly with her nose in a book. Jane thought that whenever Janet read, the expression on her face always looked as if something very important was happening. But Jane was sure that the things Janet was reading, did not resemble at all the reading material made available by the government child care institutions Jane had inhabited since she had been “rescued” by the government from her “unfit parents”. And as the children were fenced in and never permitted to leave school premises alone, she hadn’t been able to find the passion for literature that her parents had tried to instill in her.
The bell rang again, pulling Jain from her thoughts and back to her new bedroom, and the note in her hands. She wanted to stay there and keep thinking “what the fuck?” a bit more, in the hopes of having some sort of sudden realization, but the bell had rung, and even though this was her first day at the castle, she already knew what the bell meant. “Time to be systematically lied to, and bored to death all day” Jane thought leaping from the bed, determined to look as if nothing could possibly be wrong, but one phrase was playing on a loop in her mind; “Expect us”. “Expect who?”
The first half of Janes first school day was induction. After a breakfast, consisting of porridge with nothing in it, all the first year students had been told to line up in the entrance hall, from there they had been lead to the assembly hall, where they would spend the next three hours in excruciating boredom. The assembly room reminded jane of the movie theatre Jane and the other girls at Beysley had been brought to three, or four times a year, to watch a film about some brave soldier bravely sacrificing himself for the good of the empire in a show of astounding bravery. It was a large room, with no windows, and ascending rows of benches facing a large screen at the front. The major difference between the assembly room and the movie theatre, was that rather than a screen at the front of the room, there was a stage occupied by a short, stubby man, in a tweed suit  who named himself Mr. Selfridge, then spent the rest of their time together reading aloud from the heavy book that all the kids had been provided with on their way in. The book had the words; “St. Herberts Rules and regulations” printed on the cover in large yellow letters. Three hours had been spent like this, three hours of rule reading with no breaks. A few children had attempted raising their hands quietly to ask a question (presumably to ask permission to use the restroom), but Mr. Selfridge had just kept reciting rules, without acknowledging the children, or their basic human needs. Jane thought that the only time he had said anything in the space of three hours that was not written in that bloody rule book, was when he said his name at the beginning of class, but when the children were collected by the headmistress and led to the school cafeteria after class, Jane noticed that his name was actually written on a label sticker on the front of the book.
Janes copy of the St. Herberts book of rules now lay discarded next to her on the cafeteria table she was sitting at, enjoying her far too small portion of terrible, brownish pee stew that would be her primary source of energy until dinner time. 

To be continued.......sorry about all the mistakes.