Here is the second piece I have worked on, for my Creative Writing module of my University course. It is being submitted as an assessed piece of work (including the self-commentary I have included at the bottom of the story), but I wanted to share it to my blog. Namely, because it carries a strong theme about bullying. Its an age-old problem that appears to have not changed since my years in High School.
This was a difficult story to write, as someone who has been bullied and admittedly, bullied in return (unfortunately, that is the vicious cycle of bullying, but we have to be woman enough to admit these things). However, I hope that my story tackles this subject in a non-clichéd way. It is a subject matter I feel particularly strong about.
Down The Rabbit Hole
The in-crowd wouldn’t want to be friends with someone like me, so why I decided to follow them to the bottom of the playing field today, I’ll never know. You can be in our gang, Emma Porter had said. Just come sit with us at lunchtime, she’d said. Everyone wants to be liked at school, so I went. I’ve wanted to be liked so badly, ever since the day I realised that I’m, well, not. I mean, my skirt isn’t short enough, my body isn’t skinny enough, my face isn’t pretty enough, I’m not perfect enough. The boys push me in the corridors and call me a fat, ugly bitch, and the popular girls laugh. This has been the norm ever since middle school, I guess. Wow, seven years of persecution.
But, I digress. I made a mistake today. In my quest to become liked, accepted, whatever, I made a mistake. I’m now lying on the muddy grass, a disgusting cocktail of soil and blood mixed in my mouth. Puddle and rust. I am scared. My ears are ringing from where I was hit over the head with an extremely heavy Prada bag…or was it Gucci? I can’t remember. But, somewhere over that ringing I can hear someone’s voice; a voice of shock and concern.
“Emma, you hit her too hard! What the fuck have you done?”
Let me take you back to the minutes leading up to my unfortunate moment.
So, there they were, sat at the bottom of the playing field. Their usual habitat is just behind the trees, where the teachers can’t catch them smoking. Emma Porter, Melissa Crowe, Lauren Cooper. Even their names made them sound slick, edgy. Me, I’m plain old boring Jeanette Hobbs, named after my Grandma. Anyway, they saw me and started waving me over. They look like magazine models, whilst I’m bumbling around in my flat Clarks shoes and pleated navy skirt. The teachers tell me off just for having my shirt untucked, so I wonder what their reaction would be if I sauntered up to school in a pair of Louboutins? Probably less saunter, more rugby player in drag.
Off I ambled, probably a little too eagerly, as I noticed them passing sly looks of amusement between themselves as I rolled up. I’m used to seeing looks like that. Every time I talk in class, or walk down the corridor, someone has got a remark or a sneer ready for me. Blubber, swot, freak. Or, they just look me up and down like I’m something dredged up from the bottom of a pond. Pretty much like now.
“Nice bag,” Melissa had said, followed by a snort. Yet, she was so pretty and perfect, that even her snorts seemed delicate.
My schoolbag is a bog-standard rucksack from ASDA, Melissa’s is a Prada handbag (how does she even fit all her books in there?). I assumed that was her effort at trying to be nice.
“Thanks,” I’d mumbled. I’d gone over and over this moment in my head. I wanted to look cool, I wanted to impress them. Yet, I felt like a little fat guinea-pig being glared at by three Siamese cats.
“She wasn’t complimenting you, freak.”
Emma had risen, still managing to negotiate the grass in her high heels. She stood in front of me, close enough for me to smell her choking perfume, with a slight hint of tobacco. From here, I could see where her foundation was caked on, the harsh lines of where she’d drawn her own eyebrows, and a few dark hairs on her top lip. I was confused; from a distance, she always looked so flawless. She was standing far too close, so I started to step backwards.
Her French-polished hand snapped out and grabbed my collar, I felt the rake of a nail extension against my skin.
“Let go of me, that hurts.”
Lauren and Melissa were laughing, as Emma pulled the bag off my shoulder and chucked it at them. They fell upon it like vultures at a carcass, tearing it open and tossing the contents to the ground. My lunchbox, which they found hilarious because it had Disney on it, my pencil case, my new Shakespeare anthology that Mum had bought me. I lunged out of Emma’s grip to try and rescue them, and felt the spike of a stiletto as she kicked my backside. There’s a cacophony of laughter.
“Nearly lost my fucking foot, then.”
Tears burned my eyes, stinging my face.
“Leave me alone,” I sobbed.
“Ah look, hamster-girl is crying.”
Emma aimed a shoe at my side. My puppy-fat cushioned some of the blow, but it still hurt. The laughter had reduced to uneasy giggles. I looked up to see Lauren and Melissa exchanging nervous glances.
“Emma, I think she’s got the message, yeah?” Lauren sounded worried.
“No. I don’t like her fucking face. She thinks she’s better than me, with her stupid boffin books and top marks. She needs to know she’s a fat freak, no one likes her.”
She strutted over to where my anthology lay on the floor. “Fucking Shakespeare,” she muttered. She opened the first page, and with a nasty sneer, read out the message written inside. “To my darling daughter on her fourteenth birthday…yawn.” She began tearing pages out of my book like she was plucking a paper chicken.
That was my brand new book. My temples were pounding, and I could feel my heart hammering in my chest. I ran at her, trying to salvage what was left. To my horror, instead of tearing the book from her grip, I managed to tear off one of her nail extensions. Emma shrieked and threw what was left of the book square in my face. The hard spine hit my nose, the pain was blinding. She slapped me, right in my fat hamster cheeks, as she’d always called them.
“You’ll pay for that!” she snarled, as she grabbed her oversized designer bag and swung it across my face.
Now, I don’t know if she was keeping a tonne of bricks in that bag or whatever, but it felt as if she’d swung a wrecking ball at my head. I felt my knees buckle underneath me, and saw a vision of Lauren clapping a hand to her mouth as I crumpled to the floor.
“Emma, you hit her too hard! What the fuck have you done?”
Yes, that was when the laughter really stopped.
Now, here I am, lying on the cold, damp grass. Blood pouring from my nose, soil wedged up between my teeth. Guess I bit the ground on the way down. I close my eyes and will the pain to go away.
“Pst, hey, you! Jeanette! Get over here.”
I look up towards the trees. There is a little rabbit beckoning me. Wait, did I just say that? Maybe I’m concussed. I blink and look again. He’s still there, hopping frantically and waving his paw for me to come forward. He’s calling my name over and over.
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Quickly now!”
My legs aren’t working, so I pull myself forward towards the bunny. I gouge my fingers into the muddy ground and manage to haul my frame along. I know my skirt is getting dirty, I know Mum will be mad. But right now, this little talking rabbit is calling me, and I have to go.
“Now, into my warren. You’ll be safe there.”
“I’ll never fit down a rabbit hole,” I protest.
“Yes you will, just try!”
He is pointing with a little furry paw, towards a ridiculously small hole in the ground. Seeing that I can’t move any faster than this crawl, he sighs and starts pulling at my arms. He is ridiculously strong for a rabbit.
“I won’t fit!” I cry.
“Yes you bloody well will. Off you go!”
With a final shove from him, I fall down that tiny little rabbit hole. I tumble down a windy little tunnel, until I land with an oomph onto something soft and rustling. It’s pitch dark so I grasp around me, recognising the feel of paper under my fingertips. I hear the click-click-whoosh of a lighter being flicked. The burrow is filled with a dim light, and I can see the rabbit standing in front of me. He’s holding a bright pink lighter.
“Took it from Emma’s bag,” he shrugs, lighting a candle in a little glass jar. “I didn’t take this candle from her bag though, I found that.”
“Where am I?” I ask.
“Never mind where,” he scolds. “Just who are you, Jeanette Hobbs?”
I sigh.
“I am a fat, useless freak.”
“Wrong.”
“I’m not. I’m nothing. They all tell me so, I’m no better than pond-scum to them!”
The little rabbit throws his head back and laughs.
“You think your school days are going to be what defines you? Don’t you listen to a word your poor old mother says?”
“Mum…” I whisper. I look down at my soft landing, and see that it’s the pages of my torn-up Shakespeare anthology that I’ve fallen on. I pick up the page where it’s signed Mum x, and a tear drops onto it, and a little bit of blood.
He is looking at me in earnest, putting a soft paw on my muddy hand.
“Come on, Jeanette. Why would you want to be like the Emma Porters and Melissa Crowes of this world?”
“Because people like them. They are beautiful, practically perfect even. Slim, confident, and the boys definitely don’t push them over in the corridors. They’ve got it all. Me, I’m nothing.”
“Oh come on. For now, you may think so, but in the long run, have they really got it all? I think you know the answer to that.”
“You sound just like Mum,” I mutter. “She says this to me all the time when she catches me crying, after another shitty day at school.”
He giggles into his paws, telling me that my mother is a very wise woman.
We sit in silence for a moment, and he does his best to rub the dirt off my hands.
“I need you to be strong for me, Jeanette.”
“What do you mean?”
He brings his face close to me, and brushes his soft nose against the dried blood on my cheek.
“It won’t be like this forever you know, I promise. You’ll learn from this. Each knock, each unkind word, each crappy day…add it to your armour. One day, you’ll look back and wonder why you ever let people like them bring you down.”
I am confused.
“How do you know all this?”
“Because I’ve been there too, Jeanette. It gets better, sweetheart. You’ve just got to get through this day now.”
“But you’re just a r-”
“You’ve got to wake up now.”
“But I am awake?”
The rabbit shakes his head, and hops over to where the candle still burns brightly.
“They are worried about you. So you need to open your eyes, sweetheart.”
Before I can protest, he takes a deep breath and blows the candle out. I am back in darkness again. I reach out for the rabbit’s paw, but he is nowhere. I feel around me for the comforting pages of my book, but instead I feel, bedsheets…
“Please open your eyes, sweetheart.”
Slowly, I let them open. I must be in a hospital bed, everywhere is white, there’s green curtains surrounding me and there’s a tube sticking out of my arm. And there’s Mum. She’s been crying, mascara running in black rivers down her cheeks. She lets out a sob and squeezes my hand, and I numbly squeeze hers back. She’s calling for a nurse, a doctor, anybody, announcing that I’m awake. She turns back to me and runs a hand gently down my puffy jaw.
“Oh Jeanette, sweetheart. What did those animals do to you?”
I smile, even though it hurts. I’m just pleased to see her. She’s placed a cuddly rabbit at the bottom of my bed. I keep smiling.
Critical Self-Commentary
This was a difficult subject to write about, as bullying is something that affects most of us at some point in our lifetimes (whether we are the bully, the victim or even both). I knew it would be difficult writing from unpleasant semi-autobiographical experience. However, it’s an issue personal to me that I wanted to tackle. The initial idea came from a ‘writing from self’ exercise, where I drew upon some memories from my not-so-happy school days. I was also fully aware that I was choosing to write about a commonly explored subject, namely the trope of an unpopular girl that’s bullied. However, I was determined to avoid the clichés seen in movies and young adult novels, provide a narrator with a convincing voice, and place my own unique stamp on this tale.
Jeanette is hit so hard by the (knock-off) Prada bag that she is sent into a comatose state. The rabbit is a vision, so obviously she is not really dragged into a rabbit hole. This just represents her falling into the unconscious. The fact that the rabbit is holding Emma’s lighter is a humorous touch I wanted to add in, to give the reader a sense of the fine line between reality and fantasy in this tale.
The talking rabbit is a nod to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Jeanette loves reading books. This is indicated by her fierce overprotectiveness of her Shakespeare anthology, and a comment made by one of the bullies, Emma: “…her stupid boffin books…” Alice is somewhat representative of an innocent child becoming aware of the madness that’s present in the world. I wanted this to be reflective of Jeanette being awakened to how cruel and brutal the world can be, despite the fact there’s a cute little talking rabbit present.
Everything the rabbit says to Jeanette is actually things her Mum has told her over and over again, but Jeanette has always chosen to ignore. As this is in in her unconscious state, I wanted to show that she has actually absorbed Mum’s advice, even if she’s not believed it until now. The bullies’ animalistic behaviour has now brought this to a head, and Jeanette begins to make sense of this advice through conversing with the rabbit and realising that she doesn’t want to be an ‘animal’ like them.
I used animalistic descriptions when describing Emma and her gang, such as falling on Jeanette’s backpack like vultures, to represent the fact that bullies often descend into a ‘pack mentality’. I feel that this has had a strong effect; the girls are really not displaying decent human behaviour.
I wanted my tale to carry a strong moral, without ending on a cliché. Quite a difficult thing to do with a popular theme. The main issue was not writing any cheesy, overly sentimental lines. I wanted to show those bad days can, in time, make us stronger. Mum has historically been trying to tell her daughter this, and when Jeanette awakens and sees the cuddly rabbit, she is reminded of her comatose conversation, and acknowledges that Mum is right after all (without descending into the realms of being corny, ending on a short note rather than an ‘inspirational’ line).
Cover Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash
Lisa Writes 