Disclaimer: I do not own characters or settings from Degrassi. Just the stuff between the proper nouns.
Psycho
The neighbourhood is quiet. Silent. Empty. Not a soul peeks through a curtained window or steps out to check his mail. I tread softly down the street. It feels like I'm floating. Or sliding along one of those moving sidewalks in the airport.
I reach the front gate with its pointed black spires spiraling into the atmosphere. I don't remember how long I've lived in this gated community. My mom and dad and brother live in the same house as me. But it's not my house…
The gate retreats slowly as I approach but only enough so that I have to wriggle through sideways. I can hear Mom's congratulatory voice echoing throughout the neighbourhood, bouncing off the walls of the identical three-storey houses: "You've gained weight, Em!" What she means is, I used to fit through this same space without turning sideways.
My thoughts are interrupted by a short, pudgy old woman dressed in a garbage bag. She has been waiting for me on the outside of the gate. She flails her arms at me. My feet seem glued to the ground. I want to go back behind the gate! She cups her hands and holds them up to my mouth. Her eyes are dark and pleading. What is she trying to tell me? She cannot tell me aloud, because she…has…no…mouth. Just skin…where her lips should be. Part of me is relieved. She cannot speak to me or kiss me.
The gate slams and shakes the ground.
The force almost knocks me down. Still, I cannot move my feet.
The old hag gets closer and closer, her face in my face. Maybe she will try to kiss me without lips!
I ROAR!
And the force unsticks my feet. I break into a run. From her brown, drooping flesh and her dirty, sticky fingers.
The streets are filled with her kin. Old men sit on the curbs, crying their eyes out into the sewage drains, and old women grab at my clothes as I race down the street. They are all crowded on the sidewalk, and maybe they cannot reach me if I stay in the very middle of the road. But their arms are unnaturally long, and they stick their fingers in my ears, pull at my trailing hair, pinch my cheeks and knees.
But they have no mouths. The neighbourhood is quiet. Silent.
Empty…?
I'll be safe if only I can get to school. Behind the walls of Degrassi I will be protected.
The street uproots beneath me and once more slides me at superspeed toward the school. My gaze zeroes in on the building as though I were zooming in with a video camera.
Yes, I am safe from them here. The moldy elderly folk have disappeared. But I am still not alone. Outside Degrassi is a long line-up reaching from the front door all the way around the building. I try to move past the end of the line to see what's going on, but an arm reaches out and grabs me, dragging me into place. I try to scream again, but find it's impossible. My hand flies to my mouth – but only a wound of white skin is there, twisting and contorting! How could this happen to me?!
I look to see who grabbed me – maybe she can explain. But it's no one I care to see: Alex. And she only smiles thinly, coldly, her eyes looking unseeingly past mine. I swallow back the fear and disgust rising inside me.
The wait is interminable. Yet by the time Alex and I reach the front steps, only a few seconds have passed.
Now I see the reason for the delay: a set of bouncers with muscles bursting through tight black t-shirts are guarding the door and checking everyone's ID before letting them in.
Alex tosses a coy look to the largest man, and he immediately nods her in without detaining her. But when I go to do the same, he shakes his head slowly and ominously, and holds up his hand, his hand which is the size of a phone book.
Of course. He doesn't know me. He just wants to see my ID. I rifle through my purse for my student ID card, or my driver's license, or my SIN card, but none of them seem to be there. Instead, the bag is overflowing with cards that appear to be IDs of some sort. The passport-sized pictures on them are of individual cows and sheep and pigs and chickens, all looking miserable and drenched in blood. I look more carefully and realize that each card has a name. I know these names. I dig frantically, trying to find one that represents me. But to no avail: these cards only belong to Manuela, Peter, Toby, Liberty, Sean, Archie, Christine, Jack…and Shane…
I look helplessly after Alex to see if she will help me. But in the windowed doorway only two others stare out at me stonily: Jay Hogart and Rick Murray.
The biggest bouncer grabs my purse and discards it, winning back my shocked look from Jay and Rick.
"Psycho," he mutters, jabbing his hands roughly under my armpits, and feeling firmly all the way down to my knees. I'm sure he bruises my breasts and my waist. Around my ankles his arms form fists as unbreakable as iron manacles. I struggle without the power to move as the other two bouncers, their canines bared in barely-contained growls, descend on me from either side and rip into my clothes with those vicious, foaming snouts. I watch without tears or fears, only shock, as shreds of my baby-blue sweater set, my lacy bra, my jean skirt, and my silken thong float as if feathers and settle in a heap on the step before me.
The bouncers disappear, though my feet are still cemented to the ground. And my face still has no mouth to cry out, to speak out for myself.
A crowd has gathered behind Jay and Rick. They point, they muffle laughter, they whisper behind their hands, they taunt my naked body. I see Damian at the side of the crowd, a pile of books in his arms, an ambiguous frown on his face.
Rick follows my gaze and rolls his eyes at Damian. "We don't want her here, Mr. Hayes," he states, turning his stony stare back on me. I notice that his tongue is forked.
Jay chimes in, "If you're back at Degrassi, I'm dropping out!"
"Find another school, Emma, or you'll be sorry," Rick continues ominously. His tongue flickers. "We don't want you at Degrassi."
"Whatever you're here for, we're not interested," Jay declares with finality, glaring and crossing his arms over his chest.
From somewhere behind me, a giant white ribbon lowers itself out of the sky and winds itself slowly and seductively like a snake around my neck. Now shaking with terror, I appeal with my eyes to the crowd behind Jay and Rick.
But Rick intervenes: "They're not interested either, Emma."
And the ribbon squeezes.
I feel the life draining out of my face down through my naked body and onto the cement, soaking my torn-up clothes and the scattered cards.
Suddenly able to move again, I quickly shift sideways as death grips me, as though once more passing through the gate that serves to protect my community. Maybe this way they won't notice…that I have gained weight.