Sarsaparilla
Sasparilla L'coste was a ghost in both worlds.
Her Secondary School counsellor was deeply concerned about her brooding ways, how she seemed to care little for the company of others and even less about her grades. The girl went out of her way, she wrote in one report, to stick out and go on to suffer for this. The counsellor, a Ms. Hetheridge, was a lady who believed that the natural state of little girls lies in pastel frilly dresses and birthday parties with ice-cream cake and bright balloons. Sassy, in particular, bothered her as being a poor lonely foster child to whom the L'costes paid no attention to. This said to her that Sasparilla required That Special Hetheridge Touch.
She took her to the zoo, where Sassy spent the entire time fascinated with the snakes and spiders. She got her invited to birthday parties which Sassy never turned up, to all the other guests' relief. She set her up on dates with nice boys who would always wind up locked, stuck or otherwise trapped somewhere else in the theatre by the time the movie starts. She got her to go to an amusement park with some nice, model girls, but Sassy spent the whole day beside kiddy-ride lines, whispering to the children how the rides were really monsters waiting to devour the tastiest child to go on the ride – and oh… don't you look like a nice, juicy one.
In her next report, she referred to Sassy's contact relative, Lady Leliel of the Old Kingdom, calling the girl incorrigible and menacing, and would her ladyship be so kind as to join her in her office one afternoon for a little sit-down? Aunt Leliel came, and reading the report in mumbles to herself next to Sassy, congratulated her loftily on being incorrigible then chided her for being noticeably menacing. "The trick, my dear, is to menace in an absolutely unobtrusive manner. Like cheating, so they don't catch you at it" were her exact words.
Sassy was impressed. Ms. Hetheridge never bothered her or Aunt Leliel again. She did offer several recommendations to the L'costes via telephone to send her into military schools or delinquency centres, but the L'coste family being a fabrication, they merely informed her that they couldn't care less if she got the child arrested and sent to an Institution.
Years later Ms. Hetheridge became a bitter old bat about children and counselled largely by telling them they are worthless little monsters and nobody cares if they died by the side of the road the next day. This new method surprisingly got more success than any of her previous, although Ms. Hetheridge had long ago stopped caring.
Left alone, Sassy went back to wandering through the background of High School activity, barely noticed. The faculty was surprised at graduation, having never heard of her before, when she claimed top grades and made Medical School. She took to the science of forensics with certain glee and became known among her peers as "morbid", some with more admiration than others.
Sassy liked the dead. They were generally silent and offered better company than the living, having no concepts of subterfuge or treachery. Death was the final truth and you can't get more honest than dead. You always know where you stand, with the dead.
Author's Other Words:
I adore counsellors, but I could never eat a whole one... I used to go to a Catholic school. Once I told the new counsellor that "whatever it was they said i've done, the devil made me do it." It started as a prank. Then the man tried to exorcise me.
Sasparilla is a corruption of Sarsaparilla, which is a type of plant, butalso a pop made by FNknown as "Sarsi".