“The
Class Murder: Spare The Rod” by Nick Ball
What
are we doing back here again? Does anyone know? I have two answers, and they’re
both not really up to standard, but here goes. First, I started my shameful ClassM fic ‘writing career’ with
a murder mystery and it somehow seemed apt that just as The Class Menagerie
started to wind down (and likewise all we writers did the same – we can’t
exactly produce off-flow off something that doesn’t flow), I’d do the same and
return to the very point that I’d begun at. It’s one of those harmonic,
rhythms-of-nature, the-beginning-is-the-end-is-the-beginning,
look-at-me-I’m-being-whimsical-and-returning-to-my-humble-start kind of ideas
that’s great in theory but terrible in practice. I mean, seriously, the entire
point to feeling some kind of creative evolution is that you go onwards, not
backwards; what hope for a future can you have if you live in the past? So nix
the first explanation. As for the second one..
Well,
I’ve forgotten how to write. And these things are easy to knock off as I
discovered a long time ago, so suffer the children. So commences another The
Class Murder murder mystery which will annoy, perplex
and bother you until it goes away, and then it’ll reappear and bother you some
more, just like the killer in horror films. And speaking of killers, I won’t
cheat you of an ending either this time; there’s just one murderer, and I wish
you all the best of luck in apprehending the culprit - you’ll need it because
I’ve been very, very clever* this time around.
So
without further ado let’s get on with the Murder..
n/k,
2002. (As usual, I can be e-mailed
or you can view my shoddy comic
if you haven’t had enough pain)
* (by
clever, the word “stupid” is meant here)
Spare
the Rod: Part I
=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-
"Check
me out, Dani" Biff called as Dani
passed by his doorway. Biff stood next to his bed, stripped down to his chest
and pulled off a flex as Dani looked in.
"Fascinating", Dani said in a flat voice as
she turned to walk away, "now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to
work".
"Wait,
I'm not done yet" Biff said, as he walked over to the wall. "Now,
look at this" he said, taking the corner of the white curtains in his paw.
"It's
the curtains, Biff, and it'll be curtains for you if you don't stop wasting my ti-" but got no further as Biff started to swab under
his arms with the clean material.
"DON'T
DO THAT!" Dani yelled. Biff let go of the
curtain and picked up the pillow off his bed and blew his nose on it.
"BIFF!!" Dani screamed in her loudest effort
yet, "I AM GOING TO MURDER YOU!!"
"Oh REALLY, Pipsqueak?" Biff said, as he pulled the sheet
off his bed and started to stuff it into his pants. Dani
began to advance slowly into the room, growling and making preparatory swings
with her clipboard.
"I'm
stuffing this sheet into my pants, Dani, and then I'm
going to go run around the campus" Biff explained, cramming another pawful down there in a leisurely way.
"I'm
sure there's plenty of room down there for it, Biff, now GET READY TO
DIE!!" Dani said,
gritting her teeth and squeezing her fist together until her knuckles made a
cracking sound. The boys were ready for action.
Closer
and closer Dani stalked and Biff's
sudden and predicted death seemed inevitable, but then at the last second when Dani was but a step away, Biff whipped a piece of paper out
of his pocket and held it in front of Dani's face.
"Better
read that before you go any further, sweetcakes"
Biff said, "’cos you're not allowed to hit me
anymore".
Dani
snatched the paper and read it, her breathing getting heavier and heavier with
fury.
"See,
I told Coach how you hit me, and he told Dean and Dean says that you're in-dangering my uh.. sporting .. prow..uh..S..or something.."
Biff crossed his eyes with the difficulty of remembering the word. He grabbed
two pawfulls of sheet and stuffed them down under his
belt. "And now you can't hit me, you just got to give me a fine or talk to
me or something and..uh..
I'm okay with a fine ‘cos we Kingstons
got more money than God. So," Biff finished up, "it's great to be me,
huh?"
Dani
grimaced and crushed the paper into a ball. Biff was right, and the paperwork
told her in no uncertain terms if any further evidence of her hitting Biff came
to hand there could be criminal charges brought against her as well as a "academic disciplinary hearing" which was Academese for "kicking you out onto your butt for
being a bully". 'Academic disciplinary hearings were invented to threaten
jocks with, not protect them' Dani thought bitterly,
but she didn't say as much. What she did was wrinkle her nose in disgust.
"You stink, Biff".
Biff
waddled slowly over to the window (the amount of sheet in his underwear was
causing moving difficulties) and started to wipe his armpits with the curtains
again.
"GAH!"
screamed Dani in disgust and walked out, slamming the
door behind her. Biff smiled, waited a minute and then went out into the corridor
to knock on the Rydelle/Dodson door.
"Yes?
Oh, hello Biff" Cindy said as she opened it, a little taken aback.
"What do you want?" she asked suspiciously.
"I
got a whole lot of sheet down my pants" Biff said, pushing past her and
walking into the center of the room.
Lisa
raised an eyebrow and looked at Biff's crotch, which
bulged like.. bulged like.. he'd had an entire sheet stuff down there. And indeed he
had, corners of which still poked out.
"Sheets
are for the bed, Biff" Lisa said, turning back to her copy of ‘Waiting For Godot’.
"Yeah,
well, I figured you ladies might like to.. help me pull it out, if you know what I mean" Biff
said, grinning lasciviously. Of course, he wouldn't ever describe it as that;
Biff didn't know any five syllable words. Even with cuss words (Biff's area of expertise) the longest one he knew stretched
to four and that was made by joining four separate four-letter words together.
"Ew!" Lisa said. "No we wouldn't Biff, get outta here".
"No
way" Biff said, "you ladies gotta pull my
sheet out and thank me for it".
Cindy
let out a groan of exasperation. "Okay, Biff, leave here. Now. We're not in the mood for your silly jokes".
"Listen
baby" Biff said, turning to face her, "I'm a Kingston, and we Kingstons get what we want. My dad's got connections, and
neither of you will be able to get a job doing.. doing.. whatever you wanna do when you finish college unless we're all kept
happy"
Lisa
rolled her eyeballs. "Your dad doesn't control EVERYTHING, Biff, and even
if he did, we're not going to pull your.. erg.. sheet out. I don't know WHY
you have a sheet down there, but.. you..
urg. No, you're just stupid.
Get out of here".
Biff
grinned angrily. "Not without my sheet, babe".
"You
HAVE your sheet" Cindy said, exasperated.
Biff
blinked. "Oh yeah, well.. uh..
GRAB MY SHEET, LADIES!"
Lisa
rolled over from her position on the bed and stretched. "You have a
girlfriend already anyway, Biff, so why are you hitting on us?"
"Because
I can, ladies" Biff said, striding out of the room, "and let's get
something clear, right now.. I'm going to be BACK,
later, for some LOVING". He shut the door behind him.
"I.. didn't like the way he said that" Lisa said quietly
after they heard his footsteps fade away.
"Me
either" Cindy said, with a slight shudder. Somehow she knew it wasn't an
idle threat.
The
occupants of room 303 didn't fare much better. Biff opened the door without
knocking (as usual) and knocked Brad's coffee-maker off the desk (not as
usual). It smashed on the floor just as Brad was turning around in his seat to
see where the sound came from.
"HEY"
Brad yelled, "what the Hell do you think you're doing?!"
"I'm
breaking your stuff, lawyer boy. My dad says your dad's a crook, and he's got
all this evidence that he's going to use to drive him out of business and get
him thrown in jail unless you let me do whatever I want".
Brad
fumed, his chest bulging in and out with each breath. He wanted to call Biff's
bluff, but given all he'd just said, it was quite clear he must have been
speaking the truth. Brad didn't like his dishonest father any more than Biff
did for a fact, but he wanted to control any investigation of proving his
father's crime himself, not leave it open to some third party to undertake.
Knowing the Kingstons, the first thing they'd do
would be sell the rights of the court trial to the tabloids just for the hell
of it. Brad had longed for the day of proof of his father's crimes coming to surface,
but into the hands of a Kingston? Brad resolved to keep quiet now, somehow.
"What's
that you're wearing Biff, a diaper?" Kevin called across the room as he paused the videogame he was playing. He was up to the boss
of Penultimate Punch-Up, but there are some confrontations in life more
important than your on-screen ones.
"Funny,
cat boy" Biff said, strolling across the room. "Uh oh" Kevin
thought to himself, "this isn't going to be your usual
confrontation". It wasn't. Biff punched Kevin in the head, grabbed the
television set and threw it out the window.
"WHAT
THE-" Kevin screamed in dismay, holding his sore eye as he saw his XCube2
game system disappear out the window as well.
"Consider
it a warning, fluffy" Biff said, "because
the next time I'm going to hurt you". "And, for the record, it's a
sheet, not a diaper" he added as he strolled out the door, before bumping
into Tony as he was coming up the stairs.
"Hey,
beefburger, I just said 'Hi' to your girlfriend. I'm
going to give her a little something later" he said, patting his thickly
padded crotch "only it won't be gift-wrapped".
Tony
couldn't believe it. Not then, not after he spoke to Kevin and Brad and
discovered what had happened there, not after he'd heard about what had
happened to Cindy and Lisa and not even after they'd all gone to Dani and she told them she was powerless to do anything to
stop Biff, or at least, anything that would make him stop. She'd definitely
give him a fine, though.
"A
fine" Scott said disgustedly as he walked out of the floor's meeting later
in the day. "As if Biff doesn't have all the money in
the world already".
"What's
your problem?" Mikey asked him, "I didn't
hear you complain about him to everyone else".
"Me and Biff had this-"
"Biff
and I" Mikey cut in.
"Okay,
Biff and I had this arrangement where I didn't hit on the cheerleaders and he
wouldn't hit on the girls near the Sciences block. Only lately he hasn't been
sticking to that agreement, and he's been dropping subtle hints about me having
a certain medical condition that the girls at the Sciences block wouldn't be
too keen on catching".
Mikey
winced. "That's not very nice" he said. They got back to their room
and found the door wide open, with all of Mikey's
notes dumped in a pile on the floor. Some had been torn up, others had ink
thrown all over them and the perpetrator had obviously tried to light a few on
fire, but with little success. A note on the top said "ORGANISE THIS"
in a big dumb scrawl of a handwriting.
Scott
winced. "THAT's not very nice either" he
said, sympathetically.
"I'll
KILL him!" growled Mikey as he grasped the
doorframe. His paw trembled and a piece of wood broke away. Scott let out a
whistle in quiet appreciation of the strength displayed.
It was
then 5:45pm. By ten o'clock that night, Biff would be dead.
End of
Part I
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